Erhua—儿化音

Erhua (simplified Chinese: 儿化; pinyin: Érhuà); also called erhuayin (simplified Chinese: 儿化音; pinyin: Érhuàyīn) or erization, refers to a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the "ér" (儿) sound (transcribed in IPA as [ɻ]) 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 find it distasteful, and for whatever reason usually avoid words with Erhua when speaking Standard Chinese, replacing the above examples with 哪里 (nǎlǐ), 一点 (yìdiǎn), or 好玩 (hǎowán).

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 are pronounced [ɑɻ] with no initial consonant. All other instances of r-colored vowels are a result of erhua applying to originally non-r-colored syllables.