Ni hao! I just started with Rocket Chinese and am taking a vocabulary course as well, and noticed that shí means "ten", and has the same Pinyin letters for when you say "time" or "o'clock". Do both these words have the same pronunciation? How can you tell the difference between them when someone is speaking to you? Xiexie!

We can distinguish from context. 十 shí - ten 时间 shíjiān - time 点钟 diǎnzhōng - o'clock When we say ten oclock 十点钟 we don't have to say 时间 also. It's like how we distinguish reCord and Record in written English ie context.

Thank for the explanation, Oggiedoggy! What I was doing was getting each word I learned and entering each "syllable" into a Chinese dictionary to see what each word really meant. This is where I saw that shí meant "o'clock", etc. Now I see that this is a mistake and that I should just learn words by themselves.

I feel this link is somehow appropriate to this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den =D

The pronounciation depends on the Pinyin tone for the word you are working with. Some wards have the same pronounciation and tone, but different meanings. You distinguish them by their unique characters.