Is the pinyin of 「操」in「情操」and「步操」the same in Mandarin？ Originally posted at http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?4,130404


  由細到大，自己同身邊嘅人都將「劉備」個「備」字讀成與(比)字同音
  而「曹操」個「操」字就讀成與(粗)字同音
  
  但最近睇港版，『三國 』(2013)
  「劉備」個「備」字讀成「預備」個「備」
  而「曹操」個「操」字就讀成「情操」個「操」即係與(噪)字同音。
  
  可能【三國演義】讀者群廣大，而農工人仕佔總人口之中嘅大部分，佢地一見個「操」字就唸起「步操」，「操作」等較常見嘅詞句，文縐縐嘅名詞句如「情操」同「操守」就唔會立即聯想到。


I asked this question because 「操」 in 「情操」/ cing4 cho3/ and 「步操」/bou6 cho1/ are pronounced differently in Cantonese. However, when I check 「操」  in Mandarin, there is only one reading /cao1/ for 「操」,

Question:

Did Mainland Chinese merge the two different readings of 「操」 in Mandarin or the two different readings of 操 were from ancient Chinese and only Cantonese inherited the practice?
Modern Mandarin Chinese has been very different from Medieval Chinese, while Cantonese has preserved much legacy from the latter.
Although I don't speak Cantonese, I think it's plausible that 操 in Medieval Chinese and in Cantonese has more than one pronunciation.
However, even in Modern Chinese, pronunciations do change over time, especially when a commonly-used word sounds like... fuck. (You can also see many people online using 操 instead of the original fuck character to express that meaning, but they do this just because they don't know which is the original character, or they need to avoid censorship...).
OK. Time for a sip of knowledge. I said pronunciations change over time in Modern Chinese. It happens mostly in characters that are commonly used, but have different pronunciations only when used as a surname:

盖(formerly ge3 like 舸, now mostly gai4)
纪(formerly ji3 like 己, now commonly ji4)

But this doesn't happen to all such characters:

解(always xie4 like 谢 if used as surname, rather than jie3)
仇(always qiu2 like 球 if used as surname, rather than chou2)

As far as I know, the only character other than surnames that has a changed pronunciation is:

帧(&quot;frame&quot;, formerly zheng4 like 正, now zhen1 like 真)