I happened to have lunch the other day with some university students, a couple of Guangdongers and a Shanghainese, in one of those Rolex-Louis Vuitton malls that clutter central Beijing, the kind where shopgirls outnumber customers 23 to 1 on gleaming floor after floor of luxury goods, until you get to the food court and find yourself breathing into your tablemate’s ear, close enough to eat the shrimp out of his chopsticks and surrounded by wàidìrén [外地人, outsiders, i.e. people from outside Beijing] shouting order numbers and bussing tables. Astoundingly, we found seats for the whole group, and as the conversation turned to language, (inevitable if you lunch with syz), I asked if they’d been trying to learn any běijīnghuà [北京话, Beijing dialect] while going to school here.
I was rewarded with looks of confusion. Yeah, of course they felt like their pǔtōnghuà [普通话, standard Mandarin] was improving. But were they actually learning běijīnghuà?! Of course not. All běijīnghuà really means anyway, they said, is that you have to juǎn shétou [卷舌头, curl your tongue] when you’re speaking pǔtōnghuà.
This is typical. Non-Beijingers describe the pronunciation of the natives as tongue-twisting, and it’s pretty literally right. The Beijing retroflex is somewhat like the American Midwest R as in “car”; it gets tacked onto and into words and certainly isn’t suited to everyone’s second language tongue. (Listen to this post for some good examples)
The general perception among outsiders is that it’s just a way of speaking. It doesn’t really mean anything. HOWEVER, my two experts for today’s post, one six and one sixty-ish, say it ain’t so. There are words you can say with or without the Beijing-R (commonly called érhuàyīn 儿化音 or érhuàyùn 儿化韵), but often the different pronunciations really mean something different.
As a bonus, in one of the examples today, tāngr 汤儿, the Beijing-R fuses with an /ng/, turning it into a truly sublime consonant. Even the spelling /ngr/ doesn’t quite do it justice, because the /r/ is so thoroughly mixed in with the /ng/ that it really becomes it’s own special sound. When Dr. Seuss talked about the letters after Z, I’m sure this is what he had in mind. In fact: I’ll isolate it just so you can hear the two right next to each other, first tāng then tāngr:
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But back to our story. The érhuàyīn 儿化音 really does change things. In the first example it’s an actual difference in meaning: tāng 汤 and tāngr 汤儿 simply refer to two different liquids. The former means broth/soup, while the latter is the liquid that comes with your non-soup dishes, something cooked out of the meat or vegetables that you might spoon onto your rice. Sauce / gravy, perhaps, but incidental — not consciously made for the purpose of being sauce by itself.
In the second example we get more of a qualitative difference, and I’d probably concede, as an academic might say, that this research would need to be replicated for us to have full faith in the findings. Still, it’s amusing and observant that the six-year-old thinks wán [play] is something you do the way the authorities want you to do it, while wánr [play] is actually playing and having fun. My guess is that this reflects what she perceives to be a difference in register – based on where she hears wán versus where she hears wánr. Because she’s growing up with Beijingers, the only place she hears wán is at school where they’re reading 玩 and the teacher is telling them to pronounce it wán because that’s how you’re “supposed to” say it. Her interpretation: wán is what you’re supposed to do; wánr is what you really do.
Exhibit 1: tāng v. tāngr, 汤 v 汤儿.
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Six: tāngr gēn tāng bù yíyàng yīnwèiwei tāngr shì cài lǐ de, tāng shì zhǔ tāng de tāng. [burp*]
汤儿跟汤不一样因为汤儿是菜里的，汤是煮汤的汤。
Tāngr is not the same as tāng because tāngr is in the dish, tāng is like the making soup kind of tāng.tāngr jiù shì nèigè cài lǐ de nèi zhǒng tāngr. Ránhòu tāng jiù shì hē tāng de nèi tāng.[laughing]
汤儿就是那个菜里的那种汤儿。然后汤就是喝汤的那汤。
Tāngr is that kind of tāngr that’s in a dish. And tāng is the kind of tāng you eat.wǒ yào gē tāngr. wǒ yào hē tāng.
我要搁汤儿。我要喝汤。
I want to put on some sauce (tāngr). I want to eat soup (tāng).Sixty: yàoshi shuō “tāngr” jiù shì chǎo cài de chǎo biǎndòu de nèilǐtou de “tāngr”.
要是说”汤儿”就是炒菜的炒扁豆的那里头的”汤儿”。
If you say tāngr it really is from frying vegetables or frying beans [for example], the kind of sauce (tāngr) that’s in there.nà jiù shì … xīhóngshì jīdàn tāng, yígè rénr yī wǎn.
那就是 [unclear]。西红柿鸡蛋汤，一个人儿一碗。
Then it really is …. tomato egg soup (tāng), one bowl for each personSix: duì, huòzhě xīhóngshì jīdàn xiǎo miàn tiáor tāng.
对，或者西红柿鸡蛋小面条儿汤
Right, or tomato egg soup with little noodles
[note from syz: informant's favorite soup, hence the enthusiasm]
Exhibit 2: wán v. wánr, 玩 v. 玩儿
Apologies for low volume of questions, but you don’t want to use them as a speaking model anyway because they’re syz, the non-native speaker.
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wánr shì shénme?
玩儿是什么?
What is “wánr”?wánr shì zhēteng
玩儿是折腾
“wánr” is playing crazy/running aroundnà wán shì shénme?
那玩是什么?
Then what is “wán”?wán shì zuò nèr wánr xiǎodōngxi
玩是座那儿玩儿小东西
“wán” is sitting there playing with some little thingnǎyīge hǎo?
哪一个好?
Which one is better?wánr hǎo
玩儿好
wánr-play is bettershéi shuō wánr hǎo?
谁说玩儿好?
Who says “wánr” is better?wǒ shuō wánr hǎo
我说玩儿好
I say “wánr” is betternà nǐ lǎolao ne?
那你姥姥呢?
Then what about Grandma?lǎolao shuō wán hǎo
姥姥说玩好
Grandma says “wán” is betternà wèishénme nǐ juéde wánr hǎo?
那为什么你觉得玩儿好?
Then why do you feel that “wánr” is better?yīnwèi wánr hǎo wánr!
因为玩儿好玩儿！
Because wánr-play is more fun!
* Let’s raise one up for Beijing Sounds’ first realtime belch
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Comments 36
I thought this post was so cute I showed it to my mom, who doesn’t speak a lick of Chinese, and SHE even thought it was great. When I first started learning Mandarin several years ago, though they have distinct tones, I was told that the difference between eyes and glasses could more effectively be differentiated with an “er”. Blew my mind. Thanks for posting.
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 10:42 am ¶First time here (directed by The Granite Studio http://granitestudio.blogspot.com/ which isn’t normally directly accessible, but seems to be at the moment). Really enjoyed the post.
From listening to the ‘interview’ on tang汤／tangr汤儿 it sounds like you’re no mug. I suspect you’re got this more worked out than you’re letting on. Anyway, your interviewee sounds like a great source.
I’m not in Beijing, but up in the Northeast, and I’ve not spent enough time down there to quite work out the difference. Anyway, the erhua 儿化 up here is pretty strong too.
As far as I can tell, the er儿 is strongly connected to nouns. It seems sometimes to distinguish noun from verb or adjective – always gai盖 ‘to cover’, usually 盖儿 ‘a cover’ or ‘lid’ (wanr玩儿 is an exception – and I don’t recall hearing a Northerner saying wan玩, unless reading aloud), other times it might distinguish between two nouns (your soup example hasn’t registered with me before, so I’ll be listening out for it) .
The third category seems to be an indication of the small, fine, familiar, loved or insignificant: whilst skin is pi皮, eyelids are often yanpi’er眼皮儿; a small restaurant would be fanguanr饭馆儿, but a library would have to be tushuguan图书馆. I’ve heard my boss referred to by his senior colleagues as Xiao Chenr小陈儿 (his family name being Chen), but am fairly sure that if I did the same I’d be escorted to the airport, not that the Xiao小 might not be enough to achieve this outcome on its own.
None of these seem to be really critical distinctions, and I’d love to know the history of this phenomenon…could it be a relatively new development, or is it as old as the hills?
On the pronunciation; er儿 endings are a bit messy, but your tang汤/ tangr汤儿 example is quite interesting (to sad people like me). ‘tan’ and ‘tang’ have different vowels when pronounced without the ‘r’, the former being a low front vowel, the latter being a low back vowel, but when ‘tanr’ is pronounced the vowel moves back considerably. In both cases the final consonant is replaced by the ‘r’ sound. So we’re left with two words (tanr and tangr) which might sound almost exactly the same. The key difference, however, is that in the ‘-ngr’ ending, the vowel is heavily nasalised, making it reasonably distinct from ‘-nr’ ending which remains fairly clear.
Er…I seem to have gone on a bit. Hope it’s of some help. If anyone can think of some better examples, or point out my misunderstandings, please do.
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 11:37 pm ¶Once I listened to the Beijing Traffic Radio, the hosts of which are all local Beijingers, and heard an interesting example of the use of erhuayin. That’s for the word “门”men. Usually, Beijingers say “门儿”menr when they refer to an ordinory door. But when it comes to a bigger door or gate of landmark significance, they never use er; like “前门” or “天安门”。
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 9:37 am ¶Sima did a good job of pointing out some of the distinctions made by adding the 儿音 to a word.
Some instances denote smaller size while others distinguish between a noun and a verb. I want to say that in cases of the adjectives with the eryin it is more of a change in the degree of the adj – than anything else.
全活(quan2huo2) which means “whole job” or “all the work relation to a job or task”, gains a completely different meaning with the addition of the 儿音。It then can mean not only “the whole job”, but it can also mean “second job, usually after hours”. Its like the verb moonlighting, but is a noun not a verb.
In the case of 崩儿 – 崩 which is a verb with multiple meanings usually related to the act of collapsing or dying, turns into an adverb meaning “extraordinarily”.
Posted 15 Jan 2008 at 2:18 pm ¶For adverbs meaning “extraordinarily,” there’s also the similarly erized 倍儿. My favorite example of this comes from a scene at the end of the Feng Xiaogang movie 大腕儿 – hey, more erization! – where a real estate developer in a mental asylum is enthusing about all of the goodies that’ll be in his next luxury apartment complex — including an imported English butler who will ask you in ‘一口地道的伦敦腔, “May I help you, sir?” 倍儿有面子!’
I’ve got a clip of that scene up on my site at http://bokane.org/misc/Dawanr-scene.mp4 if anyone’s interested. (I put it up on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suktHyzEre4, but the subtitles may be harder to read.) A friend and I had planned to use it as teaching material for a site that never quite happened. (Don’t know what the policy is on linking things in the comments — apologies if it’s not cool.)
Posted 17 Jan 2008 at 8:12 am ¶Nice examples from Jimmy and Elisa, but that link from Brendan takes the biscuit. I’d love to know who you were planning to teach.
Looking forward to the next instalment from syz.
Posted 17 Jan 2008 at 1:53 pm ¶One word: 好玩儿
Posted 18 Jan 2008 at 6:04 pm ¶Sima – cool example. The bigger question is: where did you learn this word?! My source (I’ve only had the chance to check this with one Beijinger) says it’s an odd word that she had to ask her 67 year old father about — very old Beijinghua
Posted 19 Jan 2008 at 12:08 pm ¶Sima, everything you’ve said seems right and is a step farther than I’ve thought about it. Only quibble is with your boss, Xiao Chenr小陈儿, where I’m guessing it’s much more the 小 than the 儿 that would get you into trouble.
On the ngr v nr ending, I’m still hoping to prove the ngr is a fundamentally different sound from nr. I feel like I hear it as different but have yet to find a word pair that would prove that unequivocally.
Posted 19 Jan 2008 at 12:15 pm ¶syz,
I agree up to a point on the 小 vs 儿, but I do think the 儿 adds a further degree of familiarity. When I heard a colleague say this, I repeated it, and received a very shocked reaction. Though the boss was not about, it was made clear that I should never refer to him in this way. I was pretty sure, from the reaction, that it was worse than just 小陈.
…unfortunately, I’ve just been corrected. My local informant, tells me, when calling someone 小 ＋ family name, you should almost always 儿化，unless you are being contemptuous. So if I wished to address a junior colleague called 陈, using 小, it should be 小陈儿. Without the 儿 it would be at least a little cold.
This then becomes more baffling because there are certain names which should not receive the 儿. On a quick survey of familiar names, it seems none of the following should 儿化: 李(lǐ)，习(xí)，史(shǐ)，师(shī)，辛(xīn).
Just to further complicate matters, some people seem to 儿化 given names, and those syllables which may or may not 儿化 don’t match up with the syllables used for family names. Whether this means anything is another matter. Hells bells.
Anyway, the reason I returned was to suggest a sample recording for you to make. 摊儿(tānr) and 汤儿(tāngr) might not be the ideal test, because there is already a difference in the vowel quality. But li, lin, ling should all possess pretty much the same vowel. So maybe you could record a native saying: 白梨儿 báilír (white pear), 树林儿 shùlínr (woods), and 响铃儿 xiǎnglíngr (the jingle of a bell). Or you could even go for a whole sentence 我在树林儿里，吃着小白梨儿的时候，突然听到了一阵响铃儿。(I was sitting in the woods, eating a white pear, when suddenly I heard a bell ring. Er…the pronunciation of 梨儿 and 林儿 should be the same, whilst the 铃儿should be rather different.
I’ve actually recorded the sentence, and the three words of interest, and reached the conclusion that my ears are rubbish. Perhaps you can do better. Good luck.
Posted 20 Jan 2008 at 8:45 pm ¶Sima, your “unfortunately, I’ve just been corrected” line is a deep breath of ozone-and-particulate-free air.
The thing about learning Mandarin that really makes me cough up a phlegm-ball is the almost constant refrain of “you’re supposed to say X”. You hear it from learners and native speakers alike. Very few are willing, as you just did in this comment, to go back and check against actual practice to see what is really done. As a Beijinger might say, what you’re “supposed to” say is only so much 狗屁 gǒupì if no one actually says it.
To your phrase, “unfortunately, I’ve just been corrected” I respond “On the contrary, this is fantastic! You checked your proposed rule and didn’t just make things up”. Wish more people could do that.
It’s a very interesting observation that “without the 儿 it would be at least a little cold”. I will try to check this with some Beijingers as well, but it sounds right. I’ve always just followed suit with whatever locals do with the 儿ization of last names and had never thought about what a last name would mean otherwise.
Posted 20 Jan 2008 at 11:47 pm ¶A fun post and great comments, especially the 大腕儿 clip. Funny, everyone here in Tianjin says 倍儿 is a form of 天津话, though that might be because they always use it with 歌儿, which is decidedly un-北京话.
A question to you all: are there any special rules in 北京话 about the placement of the 儿 in a sentence?
As you might guess, I’m in Tianjin and they also use the 儿 here, but, unlike Sima’s sentence in Beijing-儿 above, it almost always seems to get appended to the end of sentences, and, unlike some of the other examples of Beijing-儿, it only seems to be applied to words in certain forms.
For instance, if I was talking to a Tianjin taxi driver and asking to go to Hebei Polytechnic’s East Campus, all three of these mean the same thing:
1. 我想去河北工大东园门口。
2. 我想去河北工大东园儿。
3. 我想去河北工大那个东园的门儿。
Sentence one is 儿-free because, unlike Beijingers, Tianjin people seldom use 儿 with 口. In sentence two, we’ve dropped the 门口 but the 儿 pops up on the end of 东园. Notice it doesn’t appear in the middle of sentence, however. In sentence three, the 儿 is attached to 门, which is standard in Tianjin and Beijing (but not used with the longer form 门口).
Is the Beijing-儿 at all similar?
Posted 21 Jan 2008 at 12:59 am ¶syz,
I am occasionally wrong. Fortunately, there are one or two kind people know to tell me when I am, and then retreat to a safe distance.
I’ll forgive native Chinese speakers pretty much anything, after having heard native English speakers in my home country try to advise visitors on how to express themselves.
As for students of Chinese…they…we…maybe genetically different from most of the rest of the human race, with the possible exception of guitarists.
Posted 22 Jan 2008 at 11:10 am ¶Hi Folks! Facinating Discussion!!! I’d love to see vastly more of this….with equal attention to other aspects of local speech outside the “er”realm.I can,at the same time,respond to the question raised a bit earlier as to what body of learners this kind of thig addresses.Answer is a larger-than-you-thought group of Beijing devotees!By fortunate coincidence most of my Chinese was learned from old school Beijingers.By that I mean right back to the last days of the Qing Dynasty when one could,and did hear Manchu spoken on the streets by bureaucrats and palace staff.All that inspired in me a lifelong fondeness for the folk-speech,and culture,of Beijing! Since I am several thousands of miles away now I am very distressed by the warnings that Beijing(and environs)tuhua is fading away.There is some objective corroboration of this,unfortunately!Let’s do our part to perpetuate that which is to beautiful to lose! A bilingual forum like this is wonderful! Go!Go! Go! Happily, Ken Grey
Posted 23 Jan 2008 at 10:32 pm ¶Hey Guys! …..Gals too! Let’s stay in touch with that 67 year old father of one of us…..That is at least a partial solution to the problem of the withering away of Beijing tuhua. I love the sound,and content,of two older Beijingers talking to each other.There is too widespread a tendency,I fear,to sanitize the dialog whenever talking to us….on the theory that we won’t understand. Some of us will,and others WANT to! Cheers, Ken Grey
Posted 23 Jan 2008 at 11:37 pm ¶Hi Ken,
Posted 24 Jan 2008 at 8:49 am ¶Do you get much chance to speak Chinese these days? Can you here much of a difference between the language in the recordings here and that which you learnt?
Ken,
Posted 25 Jan 2008 at 10:26 pm ¶Fascinating to hear about some of your experiences.I live up in the northeast and from time to time meet people who are 满族 Mǎnzú, and always ask about the language. Unfortunately, I’m yet to meet anyone who can speak a word, though I have found a 满族 phrase-book! I believe there are still some speakers up here somewhere, and really should make the effort to find out more.
Sima
Hi Sima! I haven’t done much with Manchu recently,but I’m pleased that the language is experiencing somewhat of a comeback. The first ime I ever met Professor Misch was when I walked into the Oriental Division of the NY Public Library and filled out the call slip for a Manchu-Chinese Dictionary.I was sitting there browsing through some of the open-shelf mateials when I* felt a tap on my shoulder.”Young man,did you just request this dictionary” “Yes…I was delighted to finally find one!” …”I just wanted you to know that I found that in the basement of the Vatican Library.I had it copied…and it sat on the shelf for 26 years,until today! You are the first person ever to request it.” Thus began a long friendship with one of the world’s great linguistic scholars.I’ve been very lucky that way! As for the state of Altaic Language Scholarship in the world,things are looking up…after really,really dark ages. Sometime in the 20s or 30s a Russian (Shirokogorov??)was unable to find a single speaker of Manchu in the Aigun area. As I remarked earlier there had still been some in Beijing a few years earlier,mostly connected with Imperial Palace duties. When I plead for more proactive help with Beijing tuhua,it has been geneated by past favorable experience. Haenisch,Hauer,von Mollendorf,and more recently Jerry Norman,have all contributed enormously to the preservationh of Manchu.Infact,as I recall,Verbiest was the author of the manuscript I mentioned earlier.
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 1:15 am ¶In the vicinity of Yining there was discovered in Xinjiang,near the (then) Soviet border,a few years ago the still-thriving remains of an old Manchu garrison.The soldiers had intermarried locally but still held on to Sibe Dialect of Manchu! A friend of mine from Harvard visited the area several years ago and reported positively on his findings. Now I understand that classes in Manchu are being taught at the university level in Beijing.Wonder of wonders,someone else took another peek at Manchuria and discovered recently 18 or 20 very elderly speakers of classical Manchu in a small village there. This was picked up by both Chinese and English language media and I imagine can be found by search engine
During the relatively short life of the Manchu Studies magazine,I was heartened to see the lingering interest in the area by academicians in the US,Japan,Taiwan,Russia and elsewhere.I even found a Manchu site on the internet,although the last time I checked there were no recent postings!
Please hang in there with the discussions of the Beijing colloquial dialog. There are many of us who love the stuff! Cordially, Kenh
Hi Sima….and thanks for writing. I found your posts to be both interesting and informative.
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 1:15 am ¶While northern Maine is not the most ideal place for Chinese Language practice,I do manage.The Chinatowns of Boston and New York have expanded exponentially in recent years as relations with PRC have improved.In the old days it was hard to find anything other than Cantonese but now finding Mandarin,and even Beijing Dialect are not impossible.I have not been back in Northern New England for that long and find that the Chinese population in the area is so thin that Chinese restaurants are driven to using non-Chinese waitresses. I have never seen this elsewhere in my travels around the world.
I read with interest these blogs from China,especially Beijing. Please remember that the Expats have a long history of observing,listening,and recording important aspects of Chinese language and culture. As a former member of the sadly now-defunct Manchu Studies Association I can also pay tribute to the work of foreigners in the preservation of the Manchu language.Englishmen,Russians and Germans all played significant roles. An old friend of mine Dr John Misch had a degree in Manchu from the University of Berlin,and the works of Hauer,Haenisch,and von Mollendorf all helped to keep the flame alive.
I studied for a couple of years in an intensive programat the University of Hawaii under Mrs Young Teng Chia-yee,the first lady graduate of Beijing University.Her personal guidance,and the textbooks she wrote with Prof DeFrancis were a tremendous help.I found also the work of Fred Fang-yu Wang of Seton Hall to be invaluable,especially his Chinese-English Dictionary.It is filled with usage examples right out of the Beijing area parlance. I only met him in person once,and under less than ideal circumstances.I had taken a refresher Chinese course at the New School for Social Research in NY and we invited a famous Chinese movie actress from Hong Kong to sing at an event we sponsored. It sold out quickly and I ended up as the ticket collector.An elderly gentleman appeared at the door…without a ticket….and I had no more to sell. After my reluctant refusal another student recognized Prof Wang and somehow we got him in!
I’m glad that aqttention is being given to the Beijing folk culture and I wish it,and its promoters…..Wan Sui!
Cordially, Ken Grey
Lovely post. I’ve likened the R to a Somerset or Dorset R. Very rural!
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 8:47 am ¶Sima, I’m also living in the north east and bookmarked the item from the China Daily regarding the Manchu village, sanjiazi in Heilongjiang; here is the link
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 9:07 am ¶http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2006-05/06/content_583163.htm
Phil,
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 8:47 pm ¶Many thanks for that. Good spot.
Phil Sima and Others Interested in Manchu, Thanks much for that last link.That was not an article which I had seen previously and it is of greater depth than the others I saw. I trust that I have seen some positive indicators which will hopefully stave off the sad projected end of the Manchu language! There certainly is much latent,and some active interest in holding on! I have,from time to time,found interesting stuff in two PRC magazines: Minzu Yu Yen and Minzu Yenjiu.A few years ago a scholar in Taiwan sent me two books he had written and there is scattered miscellanea in University Asian collections in the west. I am most appreciative of the stand taken by the Peoples Republic with regard to the preservation of minority cultures and solicit even more help with Manchu…,and while we’re at it Beijinghua as well…. Cordially, Ken Grey
Posted 26 Jan 2008 at 9:58 pm ¶Interesting discussion!
I’ve also noticed the correlation between the noun version of words and erhuayin. You can’t do it for every noun-word, but it seems to me on 30 seconds of reflection that most for the time erhuayin is used in a noun it can be substituted for ‘zi’(as zi also indicates you’re talking about the noun version), including the above mentioned gaizi/gair (waidiren usually use gaizi). A quick think brings to mind gunzi/gunr (cane), daizi/dair (like the bags), and pingzi/pingr (bottle).
Also, I’m not sure if nobody’s mentioned it because it’s so obvious, but you can only add it to a character at the end of a word. The wan character (mentioned above) for example. It sounds great saying ‘hao wanr’ but when talking about a little plaything/toy, ‘xiaowanyir’ you shouldn’t add it to the wan character in the middle.
In a lot of contexts I think it serves as an added distinction between words, like with yanjing (eye) and yanjingr (eye glasses). Although there is a tonal difference in the jing part as well.
Take the above for what it’s worth, I’m very very far from being an expert.
Thanks to everybody who posted above me for a very interesting discussion!
Posted 28 Jan 2008 at 3:15 am ¶liuxuesheng,
you’re right, that did need to be said. good examples too.
ken,
i think you might appreciate this:
http://granitestudio.org/2008/01/28/chinese-history-lectures-online-frederic-wakeman-jr/
Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 7:36 pm ¶Thanks Sima. I did! I am also pleased to see how many folks have commented on other blogs about the ongoing Beijinghua discussion. We KNOW that it is a hot topic and I’m elated to see the active interest expanding.I have,and continue to hint to other sites,that they actively take up the cause too.The preservation of Beijing Folk Customs and Language is a worthy enveavor…..and the destruction of every hutong and the passing of every elderly Beijinger must be rallying calls for a continuing struggle to preserve that which we all hold dear. Xin Nian Quai Le!
Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 9:38 pm ¶……….Guess age is creeping up on me too.Let’s make that “Qin Nien Kuai Le!”
Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 9:43 pm ¶I am currently trying to find out as much as I can about erhua at the moment in response to an assignment from uni. Im writing about the differences between standard mandarin and beijing hua. this has all been so interesting to read and given me some points to reflect on as well as causing me to think back to the days i spent in Beijing with those brilliant taxi driver pronunciations!!! any more examples or ‘phonological rules’ as such would help. as would any links to written thesis’ on the topic.
Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 1:04 pm ¶Hi Katie:
hopefully some others can add to what we’ve got. I’m putting together some rules/ideas for a followup post. I’ll try to get it finished this weekend. Good luck with that paper.
Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 6:37 pm ¶Katie,Syz and other Beijing Friends,
Posted 08 Mar 2008 at 4:15 am ¶Here,and in the other blogs which have chimed in on this intriguing topic,there is woven in a fair amount of help on the erization question.More is,of course,always welcome,but one especially pressing need seems to be more bilingual coverage of those other expressions and usages…….I mean those which lend such a unique and recognizable flavor to the dialog of Beijing tuhua. One of our number was written up in the press for the sheer number of these items which he has collected. While there are good dictionaries and some treatments in linguistic journals,they are usually either out of print,or printed in small quantities.Since our discussion,and Syz’ ongoing persistance here has proven the popularity of the subject among Westerners,the continual reintruduction and usage of these treasures would offer both fun and preservation!
Facinating discussion! It seems to me that the beijning 儿 is just about as easy to understand and explain as 了..
Posted 28 Apr 2008 at 10:48 am ¶I remember a few months ago I was talking with my teacher about this, and she brought up the topic that erhua was only to be used on objects etc with which one had some degree of familiarity, or something of lower status etc. As an example she said you can say “饭馆儿”, but can never say “图书馆儿”. It made some sense to me. Then a few days later it was all shattered by a taxi driver that honest-to-god said “天安门儿”. I asked him to repeat it, and this time pronounced it without the erhua. Or how about 天津儿?
Can it be that in some instances the erhua is subconscious, akin to a “speech impediment” (i use the term jokingly), and on another level a conscious choice to differentiate words as in 冰棍儿?
It is now standard for many words (not all) an dis used in HSK exam, so even if you don’t like it, erhua (儿化) is part of the standard Putonghua in mainland China and for a smaller number of words in Taiwanese Mandarin.
Posted 29 Oct 2008 at 7:43 am ¶Not really sure how to start a new thread so I am making a comment here.
Not sure if this has already been posted but I came upon a website that breaks down the Beijing-R blending (I am not a linguist so I will use this word for lack of a better one) into 23 different chapters based on the ending of the previous words, along with audio of the blends. I quickly ported the words and and audio into a word document and real player files, respectively. Took about a half hour. I listen to it every morning while brushing my teeth to get a warm up on the days forthcoming Beijing-R lovefest.
The link is: http://www.ynpxrz.com/n3918c609.aspx
Posted 27 Nov 2008 at 10:31 am ¶一般儿化音是非正式的用法，所以一般汉字加儿化音有“非正式的”意味。比如汤和汤儿，汤是指soup,“汤儿”是指非正式的汤，或者说是像汤的东西。
Posted 17 Jan 2009 at 10:19 pm ¶lin, 我认为你说的这个”非正式”的意味有道理。还有什么例如吗？
Kelly, hope you manage to come back and sorry for taking so long to reply. The site sounds interesting and I’ve actually been there on a couple of different computers but I can’t seem to get the sound files. It’s weird. I’ve asked a couple of friends and some can see them but some can’t. Don’t know if you need to have something special installed on your computer…
Posted 18 Jan 2009 at 10:09 pm ¶People will tell you a lot of shit about the Beijing R, or the Mandarin R, or the northern (or northeast) R. There are some general rules you can follow but they aren’t hard and fast. Asking the “cabbies” how to pronounce things like 前门 or 天安门 always produces interesting surprises that your teacher or upperish class chinese friends have trouble accepting or admitting. Sort of like asking them about tones which you know aren’t pronounced by most people. Chinese people don’t like to lose face, period.
I once had a cabbie who almost pulled a double R on 德胜门 – 德儿门儿。 But really, most cabbies and many beijing (ok really an incredible amount of chinese people) speak so incredibly unclearly at times, that debating these points is really a bit fruitless/useless.
Posted 30 Jan 2009 at 6:47 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 9
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