乐 (lè): happy

Meanings

1 happy
2 cheerful
3 to laugh
4 to enjoy
5 joy; delight

Characters

乐

lè

happy; joyful

Examples

HSK 3

他是一个乐观的人。

Tā shì yí gè lèguān de rén.

He is an optimistic person.

HSK 4

孩子们乐得肚子都疼了。

Háizimen lè de dùzi dōu téng le.

The kids laughed until their bellies hurt.

HSK 7-9

助人为乐。

Zhù rén wéi lè.

Find joy in helping others.

Tips

mistakes

Five readings on paper, but only two are productive: 乐 (happy) and 乐 (music). Rule of thumb: emotion words take lè (快乐, 乐观); sound and instrument words take yuè (音乐, 乐器). The other three are rare: surnames Lè and Yuè (different families, same written form); lào appears only in northern place names like 乐亭; classical yào means 'to take pleasure in', as in Confucius's 知者乐水 ('the wise delight in water').

culture

助人为乐 ('find joy in helping others') is a core slogan of socialist civic morality, plastered on Chinese classroom walls and propaganda posters; kids learn it before they can write the characters.

Components

ideograph

乐 lè

happy; music (whole character)

Modern five-stroke silhouette with no transparent inner structure - treat as one fused shape. The traditional form 樂 pictured silk strings stretched across a wooden frame (a drum on a stand), and the 1956 simplification collapsed that whole instrument-and-rack into this stylized residue. Indexed under Kangxi #4 丿 by the opening sweep; the radical is not visibly meaningful here.

Filed under radical 丿 (piě, #4) by convention. 丿 is not a separate component in 乐, so no strokes are highlighted.