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 'where', 'a little', and 'fun'. Colloquial speech in many northern dialects 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 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 , , . Furthermore, ''erhua'' is extremely rare or absent in Taiwanese Mandarin speakers.

Only a small number of words in standardized Mandarin, such as 'two' and '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 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 ; 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.

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 ( and ).
** is deleted.

Following the rules that coda and are deleted, noted above, the finals in the syllables (''bànr'') (''gàir'') are both ; similarly, the finals in the syllables (''mèir'') and (''fènr'') are both also . The final in (''tàngr'') is similar but nasalized, because of the rule that the is deleted and the syllable is nasalized.

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 may be realized with either or depending on the speaker.

Because of the rule that and become glides, the finals of () and () are both , and and are both .

The following chart shows how the finals are affected by the addition of this suffix:

Examples

* (''yìpíng'', one bottle) → (''yìpíngr''), pronounced
* (''gōngyuán'', public garden) → (''gōngyuánr''), pronounced
* (''xiǎohái'', small child) → (''xiǎoháir''), pronounced
* (''shì'') (thing) → (''shìr''), pronounced

Beijing dialect

Aside from its use as a diminutive, ''erhua'' in the Beijing dialect also serves to differentiate words; for example, 'flour' and 'heroin'. Additionally, some words may sound unnatural without rhotacization, as is the case with or ( or 'flower'). In these cases, the ''erhua'' serves to label the word as a noun (and sometimes a specific noun among a group of homophones). Since in modern Mandarin many single-syllable words (in which there are both nouns and adjectives) share the same pronunciation, adding such a label on nouns can reduce the complication.

As an example, the syllable may mean one of 'bowl', 'gentleness', 'to take with hand', (a short form of Anhui), (a place name and surname), and 'late', 'night'. However, of these words, only 'bowl', 'the little bowl' can generally have ''erhua''. Further, many people ''erhua'' , 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, 'brick', especially the brick used as a weapon) should not be .

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'' (nucleus a with no coda) with ''-anr''/''-air'' (nucleus a with coda ''-i''/''-n''), 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

The realization and behavior of ''erhua'' are very different among Mandarin dialects. Tones are marked by the tone diacritics of the corresponding tone in Standard Chinese, and do not necessarily represent the actual realization of tones. Some rules mentioned before are still generally applied, such as the deletion of coda and and the nasalization with the coda . Certain vowels' qualities may also change. However, depending on the exact dialect, the actual behavior, rules and realization can differ greatly.

Chongqing and Chengdu

''Erhua'' in Chengdu and Chongqing is collapsed to only one set: , Many words become homophonous as a result, for example 'board' and '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 (diminutive of the name Cao Ying ) 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. 'dish' becomes '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 'little chicken' and 'today' different. For example, in Huojia, the former is while the latter is .

Nanjing dialect

Erhua causes the medial to be dropped and the (third) tone to assimilate to the (second) tone, the original tone of the morpheme .

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 'nasal mucus', cf. the etymon .

In other Chinese languages

Wu

Wu Chinese 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, ( Shanghainese: ''mo-cian'', ' Mahjong') is etymologically (''mo-ciaq-ng'' 'little sparrow'), from (''mo-ciaq'', 'sparrow'). The syllable (''ciaq'', ) undergoes ''erhua'' with the morpheme (''ng'', ), resulting in the syllable ''cian'' , which is then represented by the homophonous but etymologically unrelated word ''cian'' . Further examples include:

* Addition of rhotic coda (Examples from Hangzhounese)
:* ''iaq⁷'' 'duck' → ''iaq⁷-er²''
:* ''tsy¹-liau³'' 'cicada' → ''tsy¹-liau³-er²''
:* ''shiau³-kuei³-dei²'' 'brat' → ''shiau³-kuei³-dei²-er²''
* Addition of nasal coda (Examples from Wenzhounese)
:* ''dei⁶-sy¹'' 'crab' → ''dei⁶-sy¹-ng²''
:* ''tseo³'' 'jujube' → ''tseo³-ng²''
* Historical nasal coda resulting in umlaut (Examples from Shanghainese)
:* ''lin⁶-doq⁸'' 'icicle' → ''lin⁶-daon⁶'' (often mistakenly written as , though etymologically correct spelling supported by nearby lects.)
:* ''ho¹'' 'shrimp' → ''hoe¹''

Yue

Yue languages such as Cantonese have a small number of terms with (''ji⁴'', ) that exhibits tone change, such as the term (''hat¹ ji⁴⁻¹'', , 'beggar'). Cantonese also exhibits a diminutive formation known as changed tone () by altering the base tone contour to that of the dark rising tone (), such as the term (''gwong² zau¹ waa⁶⁻²'', 'Cantonese'), which etymologically may be an ''erhua'' based construction.

References

External links

* .
* .

''Erhua'' pronunciation MP3
on MIT OpenCourseWare. The accompanyin
text
is located on page 40 of the notes.

Blog discussion of functions of ''erhua'' in meaning, with sound samples.
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Mandarin Chinese