Tone of 和 in 暖和

Question

For words like 衣服 and 朋友, we can pronounce either with full tones as yi¹fu² and peng²you³, or with neutralized tones of the second syllable like yi¹fu⁰ and peng²you⁰.

Then comes 暖和 which confuses me. In the Taiwanese dictionaries that otherwise show full tones, this word is still spelled as nuan³huo⁰. What would be the tone of 和 if it was not neutralized? Or is this maybe a wrong question; does this syllable 和 huo⁰ only exist in neutral tone?

Answer 1

和 read huo has four pronunciations:

• huō

• huó

• huò

• huo

Liang’an defines neutral huo as:

形容某種使人感到舒適的狀態。

and gives the following example words:

暖和

熱和

軟和。

The definitions of the other pronunciations of huo certainly don’t fit. Why? Well because:

• huō can only be found in the word 傻傻和和 which means stupid.

• huó basically only means: to mix with water.

• huò means to mix or to blend.

But this answer isn’t very satisfying.

Knowing that the 和 in 暖和 is the same as the one in 软和 then we can look back at an entry in ABC:

软和话儿

The given Pinyin for this word is:

ruǎnhuóhuàr

Here 和 is marked huó. It fits the idea that sometimes these 和 words are also pronounced he and hé. For instance MOE has the entry:

暖和和

written as:

nuǎn hé hé

Again: it’s second tone. So if you want an answer with a tone & not just with a neutral tone, the second tone is your best bet.