Erhua

• abstract: Erhua (); also called erhuayin () or erization, refers to a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the "ér" (儿) sound (transcribed in IPA as ) 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"), or 好玩儿 (hǎowánr) ("fun"). Colloquial speech in many northern dialects has more extensive erhua than the standardized language. Southwestern Mandarin dialects also have Erhua, for example, the dialect in Chongqing and Chengdu. By contrast, many Southern Chinese who speak non-Mandarin dialects may have difficulty pronouncing the sound or may simply prefer not pronouncing it, and for whatever reason usually avoid words with Erhua when speak

以上来源于: WordNet