How do I differentiate between "pear - 梨 (lí)" and “to leave - 离 (lí)”? They both sound exactly the same, so do I just follow the sentence to see which it is? Or is there another way to dissolve this ambiguity? I have searched online for this, but did not manage to find anything.
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1Maybe it's the same question as How to distinguish two words the same pronunciation but different meaning (gāo jià).– Becky 李蓓 ♦Jun 27, 2022 at 3:48
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@Becky李蓓 Ah thanks, I didn't see that, so my question is a dupe?– DialFrostJun 27, 2022 at 3:49
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1It depends. If you're after 梨 (lí) vs 离 (lí) in particular, then maybe not. But if you're after the general case, then I think it is a dupe. (Note: duplicates are often useful to help people find answers.)– Becky 李蓓 ♦Jun 27, 2022 at 3:50
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@Becky李蓓 I'm looking at it in particular, because I saw it in my script which I have to read out. thanks– DialFrostJun 27, 2022 at 3:51
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1While not a complete answer to your question, it might be worth thinking about how you can distinguish between "there", "their" and "they're" in English, since they are all pronounced the same way.– Olle LingeJun 27, 2022 at 7:46
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1 Answer
The general case is discussed here: How to distinguish two words the same pronunciation but different meaning (gāo jià)
For 梨 (lí) and 离 (lí) in particular, they're readily differentiated by their parts of speech. They're unlikely to be confusable in spoken Chinese: outside of contrived examples, you can't take one and swap it for the other and get a grammatical sentence.
梨 = "pear" is strictly a noun, so we can say 我买了几个梨 = "I bought a few pears", 我喜欢吃梨 = "I like to eat pears". Also it's almost only ever going to arise when we're talking about food (perhaps there are exceptions for proper nouns).
离 by itself is usually used as a preposition, such as in 图书馆离地铁站很近 = "the library is close to the subway station". When used as a verb, it's almost always used as part of a larger word, like 我离不开他 = "I can't leave him" or 我远离家乡 = "I'm a long way from home", or even in chengyu like 不离不弃 or 形影不离.
And we can also simply use 梨子 instead of 梨.
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