| Erhua | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 兒化 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 儿化 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Erhua (simplified Chinese:儿化;traditional Chinese:兒化;pinyin:érhuà), also called "erization" or "rhotacization of syllable finals",[1] is a phonological process that addsr-coloring or theer (儿;兒[ɚ]) sound to syllables in spokenMandarin Chinese.Erhuayin (儿化音;兒化音) is the pronunciation of "er" after rhotacization of syllable finals.
It is common in most varieties of Mandarin as adiminutive suffix for nouns, though some dialects also use it for other grammatical purposes. TheStandard Chinese spoken in government-produced educational and examination recordings featureserhua to some extent, as in哪儿nǎr 'where',一点儿yìdiǎnr 'a little', and好玩儿hǎowánr 'fun'. Colloquial speech in many northern dialects has more extensiveerhua than the standardized language. Southwestern Mandarin dialects such as those ofChongqing andChengdu also haveerhua. 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 witherhua when speaking Standard Chinese; for example, the three examples listed above may be replaced with the synonyms哪里nǎlǐ,一点yìdiǎn,好玩hǎowán. Furthermore,erhua is extremely rare or absent inTaiwanese Mandarin speakers.[2][3]
Only a small number of words in standardized Mandarin, such as二èr 'two' and耳ěr 'ear' have r-colored vowels that do not result from theerhua process. All of the non-erhua r-colored syllables have no initial consonant, and are traditionally pronounced[ɚ] in Beijing dialect and in conservative varieties. In the recent decades, the vowel in the toned syllableer, especiallyèr, has been lowered in many accents, making the syllable come to approach or acquire a quality likear—i.e.[äʵ]~[ɐʵ] with the appropriatetone.
In some publications, particularly those on Chinese linguistics, the儿;兒 in terms witherhua 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 byYuen Ren Chao. The small-sized characters have been proposed toUnicode[4] and provisionally assigned by Unicode in 2024.[5]
The basic rules controlling the surface pronunciation oferhua are as follows:
Following the rules that coda[i] and[n] are deleted, noted above, the finals in the syllables伴儿 (bànr)盖儿 (gàir) are both[ɐʵ]; similarly, the finals in the syllables妹儿 (mèir) and份儿 (fènr) are both also[ɚ]. The final in趟儿 (tàngr) is similar but nasalized, because of the rule that the[ŋ] is deleted and the syllable is nasalized.
The realization ofar, i.e. theerhua of coda-lessa, varies. It may be realized as[äʵ],[6] distinct fromanr andair, or it may be merged with the latter two. That is, a word like把儿bàr may be realized with either[äʵ] or[ɐʵ] depending on the speaker.
Because of the rule that[i] and[y] become glides, the finals of气儿 (qìr) and劲儿 (jìnr) are both[jɚ], and裙儿qúnr and驴儿lǘr are both[ɥɚ].
The following chart shows how the finals are affected by the addition of this suffix:[7][8][9][10]
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Aside from its use as a diminutive,erhua in the Beijing dialect also serves to differentiate words; for example,白面báimiàn 'flour' and白面儿báimiànr 'heroin'.[11] Additionally, some words may sound unnatural without rhotacization, as is the case with花 or花儿 (huā orhuār 'flower').[11] In these cases, theerhua 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 syllablewǎn may mean one of碗 'bowl',婉 'gentleness',挽'to take with hand',皖 (a short form ofAnhui),宛 (a place name and surname), and晚.'late', 'night' However, of these words, only碗儿wǎnr 'bowl', 'the little bowl' can generally haveerhua. Further, many peopleerhua晚, but only when it means 'night' and not 'late'. The rest never haserhua anderhua 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bǎnrzhuān 'brick', especially the brick used as a weapon) should not be板砖儿bǎnzhuānr.
The composition of theerhua 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.[12]
The realization and behavior oferhua 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[i] and[n] and the nasalization with the coda[ŋ]. Certain vowels' qualities may also change. However, depending on the exact dialect, the actual behavior, rules and realization can differ greatly.
Erhua inChengdu andChongqing is collapsed to only one set:[ɚ][jɚ][wɚ][ɥɚ],[13] Many words become homophonous as a result, for example板儿bǎnr 'board' and本儿běnr 'booklet', both pronounced[pɚ] with the appropriate tone. It is technically feasible to write allerhua in Pinyin simply as-er.
Besides its diminutive and differentiating functions,erhua in these two dialects can also make the language more vivid.[13] In Chongqing,erhua can also be derogatory.[14]
Different from Beijing,erhua can be applied to people's names and kinship words, such ascáoyēr (diminutive of the name Cao Ying曹英儿) andxiǎomèr 'little sister' (小妹儿).[13]
Erhua occurs in more names of places, vegetables and little animals compared to Beijing.[13]
Erhua causes sandhi for the reduplication of monosyllabic words. In both dialects, the application oferhua to a monosyllabic noun usually results in its reduplication, e.g.盘 'dish' becomes盘盘儿pánpánr 'little dish'. The second syllable invariably hasyángpíng (Chinese:陽平) or the second tone.[13]
In Chongqing,erhua causes sandhi in some bisyllabic reduplicative adverbs, where second syllable acquiresyīnpíng (陰平) or the first tone.[13]
Some dialects of Zhongyuan Mandarin preserve the coda/ʔ/. They are typically deleted inerhua like with the codas/i/ and/n/.
Some dialects distinguish pairs like-ir/-inr and-ür/-ünr, making words like鸡儿jīr 'little chicken' and今儿jīnr 'today' different. For example, in Huojia, the former is/tɕiʵ/ while the latter is/tɕjəʵ/.[15]
Erhua causes the medial/i/ to be dropped and theshǎng (third) tone toassimilate to theyángpíng (second) tone, the original tone of the morpheme儿.
TheNanking dialect preserves thechecked syllable (pinyin:rùshēng) and thus possesses a coda/ʔ/.erhua checked syllables are realized with/-ɻʔ/.
Many Mandarin dialects have a handful of words exhibiting a fossilized lexical form of nasal-codaerhua. An example is鼻涕儿bíting/pi2.tʰiŋ/ 'nasal mucus', cf. the etymon鼻涕bíti/pi2.tʰi/.
Wu Chinese varieties exhibit a similar phenomenon with the morpheme兒, generally pronounced/ŋ/. Theerhua coda is almost always a nasal coda instead of a rhotic one. Some lects'erhua also causes vowel umlaut.[16][17][18][19] The exception isHangzhounese, which adds aer²/ɦəl/ final instead, which is phonotactically a rhotic.[20][21]
For example,麻將 (Shanghainese:mo-cian, 'Mahjong') is etymologically麻雀兒 (mo-ciaq-ng 'little sparrow'), from麻雀 (mo-ciaq,/mo.t͡si̯ɐʔ/ 'sparrow'). The syllable雀 (ciaq,/t͡si̯ɐʔ/) undergoeserhua with the morpheme兒 (ng,/ŋ̩/), resulting in the syllablecian/t͡si̯aŋ/, which is then represented by the homophonous but etymologically unrelated word將cian/t͡si̯aŋ/.[16] Further examples include:
Yue languages such asCantonese have a small number of terms with兒 (ji⁴,/i²¹/) that exhibits tone change, such as the term乞兒 (hat¹ ji⁴⁻¹,/hɐt⁵i²¹⁻⁵/, 'beggar'). Cantonese also exhibits a diminutive formation known aschanged tone (traditional Chinese:變音;simplified Chinese:变音;Jyutping:bin3 jam1) by altering the base tone contour to that of the dark rising tone (陰上), such as the term廣州話 (gwong² zau¹ waa⁶⁻², 'Cantonese'), which etymologically may be anerhua based construction.[24][25][26]
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