Erhua

Erhua (simplified Chinese: 儿化; traditional Chinese: 兒化; pinyin: érhuà); also called erhuayin (simplified Chinese: 儿化音; traditional Chinese: 兒化音; pinyin: érhuàyīn) or erization, refers to a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the "ér" (儿) sound (transcribed in IPA as [ɚ]) to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. It is most common in the speech varieties of North China, especially in the Beijing dialect, 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 nǎr ("where"), 一点儿 yìdiǎnr ("a little"), and 好玩儿 hǎowánr ("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 non-Mandarin dialects 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 nǎlǐ, 一点 yìdiǎn, 好玩 hǎowán.

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