Erhua
Erhua, also called "erization" or "rhotacization of syllable finals", is a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the er sound to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. Erhuayin is the pronunciation of "er" after rhotacization of syllable finals.
It is common in most varieties of Mandarin as a diminutive suffix for nouns, though some dialects also use it for other grammatical purposes. The Standard Chinese spoken in government-produced educational and examination recordings features erhua to some extent, as in 哪儿 'where', 一点儿 'a little', and 好玩儿 'fun'. Colloquial speech in many dialects, especially in northern China, has more extensive erhua than the standardized language. Southwestern Mandarin dialects, such as those of Chongqing and Chengdu, also have erhua. By contrast, many southern Chinese, such as in Fujian and Guangdong, who speak their own languages, may have difficulty pronouncing the sound or may simply prefer not to pronounce it, and usually avoid words with erhua when speaking Standard Chinese. For example, the three examples listed above may be replaced with the synonyms 哪里, 一点, 好玩. Furthermore, erhua is extremely rare or absent in Mandarin speakers from Singapore and Taiwan.
Only a small number of words in standardized Mandarin, such as 二 'two' and 耳 'ear' have r-colored vowels that do not result from the erhua process. All of the non-erhua r-colored syllables have no initial consonant, and they are traditionally pronounced in Beijing dialect and in conservative varieties. In the recent decades, the vowel in the toned syllable er, especially, has been lowered in many accents, making the syllable come to approach or acquire a quality like ar—i.e. ~ with the appropriate tone.
In some publications, particularly those on Chinese linguistics, the 儿; 兒 in terms with erhua is written with a smaller size to distinguish its non-syllabic nature. This also distinguishes it from the same character being used as a noun meaning 'son'. This practice may have been introduced by Yuen Ren Chao. The small-sized characters have been proposed to Unicode and provisionally assigned by Unicode in 2024. In Unicode 17.0, the simplified and traditional forms of the character are encoded as and in the Ideographic Symbols and Punctuation block.
Standard rules
The basic rules controlling the surface pronunciation of erhua are as follows:- Coda
- * and are deleted.
- * is deleted and the syllable becomes nasalized.
- * becomes rhotacized.
- Nucleus
- * becomes if it is an underlying.
- * and become rhotacized.
- * and become glides.
- * is deleted.
The realization of ar, i.e. the erhua of coda-less a, varies. It may be realized as, distinct from anr and air, or it may be merged with the latter two. That is, a word like 把儿 may be realized with either or depending on the speaker.
Because of the rule that and become glides, the finals of 气儿 and 劲儿 are both, and 裙儿 and 驴儿 are both.
The following chart shows how the finals are affected by the addition of this suffix:
Examples
- 一瓶 → 一瓶儿, pronounced
- 公园 → 公园儿, pronounced
- 小孩 → 小孩儿, pronounced
- 事 → 事儿, pronounced
Beijing dialect
As an example, the syllable may mean one of 碗 'bowl', 婉 'gentleness', 挽 'to take with hand', 皖, 宛, and 晚 'late', 'night'. However, of these words, only 碗儿 'bowl', 'the little bowl' can generally have erhua. Further, many people erhua 晚, but only when it means 'night' and not 'late'. The rest never has erhua and erhua attempts will cause incomprehension.
Erhua does not always occur at the end of a word in Beijing dialect. Although it must occur at the end of the syllable, it can be added to the middle of many words, and there is not a rule to explain when it should be added to the middle. For example, 板儿砖 'brick' should not be 板砖儿.
The composition of the erhua system varies within Beijing, with the following variations reported. Apart from sub dialects, many sociological factors are involved, such as gender, age, ethnicity, inner/outer city, south–north.
- Some merge -ar with -anr/''-air, as, while others distinguish them as vs.
- Some merge -er single e'' with erhua. with -enr/''-eir, as. This may depend on phonological environments, such as the tone and the preceding consonant.
- Some merge -ier and -üer with -ir/-inr and -ür/-ünr, as .
- Some merge -uor with -uir/-unr, as.
- Some lose the nasalization of -ngr, thus potentially merging pairs like -ir/-ingr, -enr/-engr and -angr/-anr''.
In other Mandarin varieties
Chongqing and Chengdu
Erhua in Chengdu and Chongqing is collapsed to only one set: , Many words become homophonous as a result, for example 板儿 'board' and 本儿 'booklet', both pronounced with the appropriate tone. It is technically feasible to write all erhua in Pinyin simply as -er.Besides its diminutive and differentiating functions, erhua in these two dialects can also make the language more vivid. In Chongqing, erhua can also be derogatory.
Different from Beijing, erhua can be applied to people's names and kinship words, such as and 'little sister'.
Erhua occurs in more names of places, vegetables and little animals compared to Beijing.
Erhua causes sandhi for the reduplication of monosyllabic words. In both dialects, the application of erhua to a monosyllabic noun usually results in its reduplication, e.g. 盘 'dish' becomes 盘盘儿 'little dish'. The second syllable invariably has or the second tone.
In Chongqing, erhua causes sandhi in some bisyllabic reduplicative adverbs, where second syllable acquires or the first tone.
Zhongyuan dialects
Some dialects of Zhongyuan Mandarin preserve the coda. They are typically deleted in erhua like with the codas and.Some dialects distinguish pairs like -ir/''-inr and -ür/-ünr'', making words like 鸡儿 'little chicken' and 今儿 'today' different. For example, in Huojia, the former is while the latter is.
Nanjing dialect
Erhua causes the medial to be dropped and the tone to assimilate to the s= tone, the original tone of the morpheme 儿.The Nanking dialect preserves the checked syllable and thus possesses a coda. erhua checked syllables are realized with.
Non-rhotic ''erhua''
Many Mandarin dialects have a handful of words exhibiting a fossilized lexical form of nasal-coda erhua. An example is 鼻涕儿 'nasal mucus', cf. the etymon 鼻涕 .In the Malaysian Mandarin dialect, erhua is often pronounced as /ə/, due to the influence of southern Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien.
In other Chinese languages
Wu
varieties exhibit a similar phenomenon with the morpheme, generally pronounced. The erhua coda is almost always a nasal coda instead of a rhotic one. Some lects' erhua also causes vowel umlaut. The exception is Hangzhounese, which adds a er² final instead, which is phonotactically a rhotic.For example, is etymologically 麻雀兒, from 麻雀. The syllable 雀 undergoes erhua with the morpheme 兒, resulting in the syllable cian, which is then represented by the homophonous but etymologically unrelated word 將 cian. Further examples include:
- Addition of rhotic coda
- Addition of nasal coda
- Historical nasal coda resulting in umlaut
Yue