I am just learning that yuèzǎo yuèhǎo means "The sooner the better". I'm wondering why the word for "month" is in there. How does the literal translation of this phrase work?

Hi Todd, this yue, while also having the fourth tone, is a different character to the yue (month). This is often the case with many characters. The tone may be the same but the character is the identifier. Even if you are not learning the characters you can look up the MDGB or NCIKU websites and see the characters for the Pinyin. Just like English, it is often the way it is used in context that identifies the meaning even if the tone is not pronounced correctly.

Oh, of course, that makes sense! I just started playing with the dictionary at nciku.com, and looking up the pinyin there, I see that there are many words pronounced yuè! Thank you.

There are many words that sound exactly same, so one has to discern from context.

This is why i recommend to learn the character for a specific word as soon as you learn how to pronounce it! Sometimes I don't like reading in Pinying because I am not sure about what the sentence means, when it comes to new sentences.

Agree.