月 yuè lists the alternate pronuncation ròu in Skritter. I know that this character, when used as a radical, can represent flesh, but is it ever pronounced ròu as an actual character?

No but Skritter is about characters and its not a dictionary so for me it kind of make sense the way they do it. It would be nice if they can add a bit of etymology info. The stand alone rou4 is 肉, picture of a piece of meat etc.

It might be nice to differentiate "radical-only" pronunciations, maybe put it in brackets, to show that you'll never encounters that sound in actual reading.

I mentioned a long time ago to the Skritter team that the 月 in many body related etc. characters is not yue, but rou. They then added that pronounciation to 月. However, that was not exactly what I meant, since according to yellowbridge it is actually the 肉 (meat) character in a shortened form . It is just written exactly like yue when a component in a character apparently.

For example: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?searchChinese=1&characterMode=s&switchMode=1&zi=%E9%AA%A8#

It really does make much more sense that all those body related characters have the meat radical and not the moon radical.

But that is just one dictionary, I didn't do a lot of further research on it.

Oh, this helped me a lot. Thanks!

Chinese is so interesting.

Cool I never knew that before, cheers!

I think it would be more clear to add 'Radical form of 肉' to the definition instead of having 'ròu' in the pronunciation.

If you use paper dictionary and look the character up by radical, you would find that the characters listed under 月 is a lot less then 肉. Something like 20 to 80 or something. It is not always straight forward though. Like 有 etymology speaking it is a picture of a hand holding a piece of meat so it should be listed under 肉 but it actually listed under 月 instead.

Would "Radical variant of 肉'' be a better way to describe it?

Another interesting factoid is that when 月 is a radical on the right side of a character it is often related to moon. When it's on the left side, it is often related to the body.

It would. There seem to be two separate code point for ⺼ rou4 and 月 yue4 anyway so they could be separated out in theory. Depending on your font you might be able to see down and up stroke instead of two horizontal in rou4.

"Another interesting factoid is that when 月 is a radical on the right side of a character it is often related to moon. When it's on the left side, it is often related to the body. "

Oooh, that helps a lot. It feels like when I was asking my mom about the two sides of 班 ban1 heh.

It is now changed to:
月 moon; month (Kangxi radical 74=moon¶
130=flesh)
In this way, it should make sense: as a character, it has only the meaning of moon, only when it is used as a radical, it may carry the meaning of flesh.

Thanks Roland!

A related problem that needs correction. In Skritter's database, there's an entry for ⺼ ròu. Its reading is yuè and the definition is “(variant of 月) meat”. Actually, this component has nothing to do with 月 yuè. Its reading should be ròu and defined as “(variant of 肉) meat”.

I noticed the updated definition, but rou4 is still (incorrectly) listed in the pronunciation.

I've went ahead and changed the pronunciation, despite searching for it in many dictionaries, as well as Google, to no avail. Baidu for some reason returns the number 11964. I'm thinking it's an ancient numerological recipe for nuclear fusion. What is your source for the pronunciation?

@Evan, thanks for looking into this. just to clarify, In your question, are you referring to:
1) 月 (with request to remove pronunciation rou4)?
or
2) ⺼ (with request to change pronunciation to rou4)?

For #2, There's a great radical user dictionary compiled by @idolse for Pleco dictionary, which states:

⺼
ròu
meat; flesh; carnalMEAT radicalNotes: This variant isn't actually used - the standing moon - 月 - is drawn in it's place.Mnemonic: ribs of an animalVariants:肉⺝RANK: 0.0%Modern Standalone: NoExamples: 肌 肝 肥 育

The sources used for the radical dictionary are listed here:
http://www.plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1149

Just hope that the 康熙字典 can clarify this problem a bit. The second entry under the 肉 radical section, http://www.kangxizidian.com/kangxi/0973.gif , explains the component ⺼ as:

[月] 《正字通》肉字偏旁之文 本作肉 石经改作[月] 中二画连左右 与日月之月异 今俗作⺼ 以别之

Translated into English: [月] is the the form of 肉 as a character component. Original written as 肉. 石经 (name of a book) changed it to [月], where the two horizontal strokes touch both the left and right sides. This is different from the character 月 of 日月. Now, this is commonly written as ⺼ to differentiate them.

Note: I have used the symbol [月] to represent that 月ròu component in the dictionary, which is different form the 月yuè of 日月.

In other words, when 肉 is written as a component, it looks very similar to the character 月yuè . But actually, there is a difference between them. The two horizontal strokes of [月] ròu touch both the left and right sides whereas the two horizontal strokes of 月yuè only touch the left side (cf. the 月yuè section: http://www.kangxizidian.com/kangxi/0504.gif ). To make them more distinguishable, now this component is written as ⺼.

So ⺼ should be read as ròu. It is a variant of 肉. It is different from the 月of 日月. 月yuè and ⺼ròu are distinct characters under different sections of the dictionary. Don't mix them up.

So, can we remove 'rou4' from the pronunciation of 月, since that character, in itself, is never pronounced that way？

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for your insight, guys. I'll go ahead and remove the rou4 pronunciation for 月.

Thanks Evan!

McNaughton and Li in Reading and Writing Chinese Characters say that as radicals, the two are identical (yue is no. 178 and rou, as a radical, no. 326). As radicals, they show both with the cross-strokes attached only at the left, i.e. identical. Is that wrong, pts? I'm just curious.

@Zeppa Chinese characters do have variants and this is the norm rather than exception. People in the past sometimes write the characters differently than that specified by the dictionary. This concept of a standard font only becomes practical after the computer age. There are countless examples in the past where the rou and yue radicals are written in exactly the same way. We should be more flexible when reading the characters and treat those characters that are different from the standard as variants rather than errors. On the other hand, when learning a character, we should be more strict with ourselves and learn the preferred way of writing it.

In the mainland, the ⺼ rou component has now been replaced by the 月 yue component. So 脚 is written with a 月 yue component, the same component as that on the right hand side of 期 . They are indistinguishable. Not only that, the government have also migrated all the characters with a ⺼ rou radical into the yue radical section. So, if one searches under the 肉 radical section of the dictionary, now she will no longer find characters such as 脚 that have a ⺼ component but only those like 腐 that actually contains a 肉 inside them. Now 脚 is to be found under the 月 yue section. The ⺼ rou component has been eliminated. This also means that the 月 component inside 脚 should now be considered as a moon.

There are similar cases where several radicals have been merged. For example, the 人 of 内 was actually a 入rù . The traditional way of writing 内 is 內. The 人 radical has now completely replaced the 入 radical. Yet we have never heard of people mentioning that 人 should also be read as rù because sometimes it can also means 入. Radicals like 门, 犭 and many others have also replaced other radicals. But we seem to have forgotten these merging, and those replaced radicals are simply forgotten. Thinking in this way, then why should 月 be singled out and given special attention?

Thank you, pts.
I was also mystified by the pronunciation point.