On talking like a 7-year-old
The trouble with informants is that they’re human. Just take the case of the ingenuous Margaret Mead, who documented what appeared to her to be an idyllic and nearly angst-free sexual development for Samoan girls only to have it shown, later, that her informants were playing with her mind (short NYT synposis here).
And so it goes with érhuàyīn (儿化音 aka “Beijing-R” ie the adding of /r/ to the end of some words). The informants play with your mind. In the comments from this early Beijing Sounds post, readers laid out some pretty clear and usable general rules for when and when not to add it.
- “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’”
- “it might distinguish between two nouns” (e.g. the tāng v. tāngr distinction in the post)
- “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”
- “For adverbs meaning “extraordinarily,” there’s also the similarly erized 倍儿”
- “Usually, Beijingers say “门儿”menr when they refer to an ordinary 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”
As others pointed out in the same post, though, there are all sorts of exceptions
- “a few days later [the rules were] all shattered by a taxi driver that honest-to-god said “天安门儿”.
- “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… I once had a cabbie who almost pulled a double R on 德胜门 – 德儿门儿”
The use of -y in English provides a not-entirely-parallel but useful analogue. It’s used to make some words essentially different (babe-baby, pup-puppy). Or you can add it to lots of things optionally (dog-doggy), as an endearing bit of juvenility, a very informal register, while still feeling confident that you’re communicating in well-documented English. However, there are some words for which -y just doesn’t work, or more accurately for which -y would put the word outside mainstream acceptability. Sure, you can say “ice creamy” — but any native speaker’s going to know you’re just being cutesy.
The Zhonglish speaker, alas, lacks the confidence of (seemingly) infallible intuition. You hear it — you try it yourself. So what to do when presented with an example like this?
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PBS (addressing Grandma)
Háishì chī sì wǔge wǒmen jiā de yuánxiāo hǎo ma?
还是吃四五个我们家的元宵好吗？
Maybe I can eat four or five of our homemade yuanxiao (sticky rice dumplings) okay?[muttering to Mom]
[to Grandma again]
Lǎolao, wǒ hái xiǎng chī liǎng ge — sì wǔ ge wǒmen jiā de yuánxiāor.
姥姥我还想吃两个——四五个我们家的元宵儿。
Grandma, I still want to eat two — four or five of our homemade yuanxiao [pronounced with érhuàyīn]Grandma
Nǐ chī bei
你吃呗
Eat them then.
First, maybe you ask your nearest alternate informant (in this case Mrs. BJS) why PBS would say that. But then you might hear “No, she didn’t say that. You can’t add érhuàyīn to yuánxiāo.”
“But I just recorded it. Really!”
“Oh, yeah probably she’s just playing around.”
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Comments 23
Ahhhhhhhhhh! BJS Constitution Sub-Section 3 seems to be going the way of the Mandarin Oriental hotel! (Or does that only apply to recording transcripts?)
Charming post (as usual). I didn’t know the “bei1″ substitution for the “ba” particle is written with it’s own character. I just thought it was an alternative pronunciation for 吧.
Also, to me, the very first thing on the recording sounds very much like “har” (presumably “hair”) rather than “haishi.” Why is that?
(By the way, is the second link in the post supposed to go to the same Google Books page as the first one?)
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 5:38 am ¶I was wondering if adding the 儿 to 天安门 could be an expression of familiarity. Tian’anmen especially is an iconic structure for people in Beijing and for some people it may be appropriate to add 儿 to that place name.
There may also be a distinction in the “location” as opposed to the actual “structure” – you can say 双井儿 or 五道口儿, so if you’re talking about the area surrounding 天安门 the structure, why not 天安门儿?
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 9:39 am ¶Having a Mrs. BJS my self (okay shes from Hebei but close enough right?) I’ve noticed I cant always rely on her verbatim, I think the last time I found a contradiction in the advice given it had to do with erhua as well. Another myth debunked? Maybe its just language changing, that or maybe its because hes little and still doesn’t understand him self?
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 10:20 am ¶Albert: as chief spokesperson for the BJS enterprise, it is my duty to explain with utter clarity that this post is in no way in violation of any part of the Constitution. Regarding Section 3, we would like to reiterate our absolute commitment to the proliferation of pīnyīn. At the same time, our lawyers have determined that readers, herein classified as “sovereigns”, are entitled to extra-constitutional treatment even though their comments intrude on the main territory of a post. Rumors that the author was too lazy to annotate the pīnyīn are comic (but threatening) rumors spread by disenchanted ne’er-do-wells.
OK, all fine print aside…
2nd point: I thought the same thing “alternate pronunciation of 吧” but it was in my ABC dictionary and I checked with a (better!) informant too. Actually, I quite liked the def. in the ABC because it meshed with my sense of the word — “grudging agreement” was the dictionary’s term — something like “go ahead and do it then” is how I’d paraphrase. Definitely not quite the same as the simple command 吧.
Finally, I’d meant to note something about her “háishì”. Classic consonant elision as noted in this post. Glad you brought it up!
@Josh, interestingly testable idea about location vs structure. Let me know if you probe it any more.
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 11:04 am ¶I’m glad Josh brought up the location versus structure debate. Sometimes your chinese friends who are confident that something is one way (but never talk to say, 90 percent of the pop. that speaks ‘their language’) just can’t accept that 天安门 gets an 儿 and that the rules regarding 儿 are somehow not what they imagine them to be. (This can sometimes go with any word or piece of grammar that you know in use is actually far different from the dictionary definition or the definition they know. Only after you show them with many examples, or find a baidu zhidao post explaining you are right will they accept.)
I have been in cabs with chinese people who will try to talk to the driver about this and be like, hey, but you wouldn’t call the ‘actual’ tiananmen tiananmenr, would you? I think a fair amount just keep on saying tiananmenr and a small portion maybe sort of follow the lead of the person in the back (out of respect, deference?) I always assumed to most cabbies 天安门儿， 朝阳门儿 are just gates. If you wanted to get across that ‘area’ why wouldn’t you say 朝阳区, 天安门附近，etc. I think those words are locations and structures and I think while the distinction is the last refuge for your chinese teachers, its a little lost in the private lives of cabbies.
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 12:14 pm ¶Totally forgot my favorite word and the real reason I wanted to post.
Extraterritoriality. One of my favorite words.
治外法权
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 12:17 pm ¶I once got in a cab with my folks and asked to go to 琉璃厂 liú lí chǎng. He laughed and said I was saying it wrong. It should be, he said, 琉璃厂儿, with an 儿 to make any swashbuckling scourge of the seven seas smile in satisfaction. “But, I’m from Nanjing” didn’t get me anywhere either and in the end he wouldn’t let us leave until I replicated the érhuàyīn. So anyway, I now have it on good authority that that one DEFINITELY takes the 儿. One down.
And you’ll have to forgive the alliteration. i made it to “smile” without realising it and when I did I figured at that point I had to finish it off.
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 8:20 pm ¶oh and I’m hearing 还是 as 还儿 as well, though after the wu bit i’m starting to feel you potential pain.
Posted 11 Feb 2009 at 8:24 pm ¶No matter how many times I listen to it I still hear 还是 as hái[sh]ì, not as 还儿. Consonant elision, not erhuayin.
Posted 13 Feb 2009 at 7:31 pm ¶Oh it’s so rare for syz to get any support on his phonetic analyses…
So thanks, chriswaugh_bj, for the love on “还是 as hái[sh]ì”. This is one sound I’m highly confident about (in my own diffident way). My guess is that you folks outside Beijing just don’t hear it often enough to have a sense of it — but feel free to tell me I’m wrong.
I think chriswaugh and I are also supported by grammatical analysis — i.e. I don’t know how you’d make sense of the phrase if it was 还儿.
Posted 13 Feb 2009 at 8:59 pm ¶Wait, are are you confused about whether you should write 还儿 instead of 还是? I mean it’s clearly a Beijing/North China sh/zh/ch/r -> er. Is there really a debate about this? I mean, is that not clear yet from living in Beijing? Obviously one doesn’t write out 还儿, because this is just what happens when certain sounds are pronounced when followed or preceeded by certain others.
Example. We don’t write, 德儿门， to mean 德胜门, even if someone said it like that. Am I missing something hear? Do you guys not understand the accent here?
Is your contention that erhuayin and elision are mutually exclusive? The elision results in an ‘r’ type sound as the the tongue rests in the same starting position but is too lazy to move itself to pronounce anything but a flat (and fat) r.
多少钱 –> 多儿钱。 dropping of the shao and replaced with an r sound
还是吃四五个 —> 还儿吃四五个 – omission of a sh sound replaced with an r. What is at issue here, will someone tell me?
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 4:10 am ¶hsknotes I’m not even gonna ask if you’re in Beijing cuz it’s waaay too late to be up commenting… but glad to see you here as always.
I think what you’re confused about is that Albert and then Kellen were saying they heard a different word than what I had written: 还儿 instead of 还是. So they were wondering why I had written 还是. I did, of course, because of exactly what you said: that the underlying word is 还是, but the sh is elided in typical Beijing fashion.
It looks like you, on the other hand, are just using 还儿 as a phonetic representation of 还是. So you and I and chriswaugh are all talking about the same thing: namely, 还是 with an elided sh. I don’t think that’s how Albert & Kellen were thinking about it, probably because they both live in places where the sh wouldn’t get elided very often. But they can correct me if I’m wrong.
One phonetics note: I’d argue it’s not so much that “the elision results in an ‘r’ type sound as the tongue rests in the same starting position” as it is this: since 是 would be retroflexed, you end up with the -r ending leftover after the sh has been deleted. There are other instances where consonants are elided without any sort of erhuayin.
BTW you might like the duorqian post, then, if you haven’t heard it — although as soon as you listen you’ll say “hey, I’ve heard better elision than that”
and PS: extraterritoriality, ha, yes, exactly the word I couldn’t come up with (in English let alone Mandarin)
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 4:33 am ¶Maybe it’s way to early to be commenting! Who asked for time stamps anyway?
Oh, I get it, they don’t know how to write elided Beijiinghua. Of course 还儿 is the Beijing pronunciation of 还是 when the shi is omitted/elided.
A note on the final ‘bei’. One again, I am confused about the issue of contention. She may very well being say bei, but it is cut off and hard to hear. I really hear:
你吃不得也。
And yeah, 呗 and 吧 aren’t that similar.
What are the sounds you think that are elided that don’t result in with an r sound replacing the original?
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 11:52 am ¶Well I certainly know jack about erhuayin. Though I did think it an odd thing to say, or at least not one I could figure out a justification for based on what I’ve read about erhuayin, i was just going by sound as it registered to my brain. To me the northern 是 sounds like a bit like American “sure” anyway.
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 9:00 pm ¶@hsknotes, sometimes elision results in kind of an /h/ or just nothing, as in the name of an acquaintance, Bái Xiǎoyù, which comes out a lot like Bái hiǎoyù or just Baí ǎoyù. In general, I’d say there’s no natural /r/ substitution when elision takes place. It’s just that a lot of words that are commonly elided — e.g. the aforementioned háishì or also bùzhīdao — also happen to have erhuayin in the final position of the syllable with the elided consonant. So the whole thing blends into /r/.
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 9:23 pm ¶I’m skeptical of that elision returns nothing/empty h. I think I will do some fieldwork.
I know about the other elision that the wikipedia page mentions, 赶紧去 with the ‘j’ sort of losing itself.
As for the the example you state, I think that often still carries a tinge of an ‘r’ often, but I see what you’re getting at when the next syllable is a ‘y’/'u’.
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 10:02 pm ¶A note on the elision in 还是 – I often seem to hear what sounds like a tap of the tongue or a very soft “d” sound where the transition from hai to the (sh)i occurs, something like “hai(d)r” if that can even attempt to approximate it. Perhaps a phrase that better exemplifies this is 多少钱 “duo (d)r qian” in which case there also seems to be a semi omission of the “q” in qian.
Posted 14 Feb 2009 at 10:14 pm ¶syz:
I’m afraid for once I’m going to have to agree with you here. chriswaugh has it quite right too.
This 还是 business is absolutely not 儿化 and is a quite different phenomenon and is both meaningfully and phonologically distinct. It would be highly misleading to write 儿 in such places. On the other hand, it might, at a stretch, be a nice insight into how 儿化 developed.
Josh is also on the money, if you’ll forgive me saying so.
Just in case you think I might be going soft on you in some kind of post-Valentine’s haze, I’ll go out on a limb…. Might there actually be something between 还 and 想 in the second sentence?
Posted 15 Feb 2009 at 4:46 pm ¶sima. I think we or people in the know recognize this is not strictly the typical ‘erhua- effect where by something like 摊子 or 摊 becomes 摊儿。 But the net effect in most cases of the ellision is to produce an ‘r’-type sound. 还是 sounds like 还儿, or at least an english hai(r), if you want to say it is more of an english ‘r’ than an chinese ‘er’. Regardless, it is one of the main features that gives beijing it’s so-called ‘r’ sound, where by a whole sentence just sounds muddled into a string of r’s.
咱们去这儿的饭馆儿还是（儿）那儿的饭馆儿。 sounds very ‘r’-ish, with perhaps even more r-sounds than these five if you get the right person. So yes, strictly speaking it’s not the 儿化， but rather the 儿话， and by that I don’t mean 儿童话。
It certainly is not ‘terribly’ misleading to write ‘儿’ as I think any language learner who has heard the beijing accent, or any speaker of beijinghua (with proper introduction, if they don’t actually know how their speech sounds, would understand it). The mid level 口语 books from 北语 (the orange ones) go into a detailed discussion of certain elements of beijinghua and I believe they used this notation, but I can’t remember. I will go check and see.
Posted 15 Feb 2009 at 5:32 pm ¶One more thought I had for comparative reasons is the difference between 孩儿and 还是 (in its elided form). There is a syllabic difference here even though the first character still has the same phonetic/tone combination. The former is still one syllable, while the former is decidedly a two syllable word even if the “sh” of 是 is omitted or skipped to some extent.
Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:06 am ¶Thank you, Sima and Josh. I’ve been trying to get my head around HSKNotes’ multitude of erhua’s and for me it just doesn’t work. I’ve certainly never said duo r qian, for example.
Now, maybe I’ve learnt this all wrong and I have to go back to square one. Or maybe this is the last hangover of my time in Changsha. But so far as I can tell, if elision has any effect on the vowel, it’s a schwa-ifying effect- which seems only natural, given the generally unstressed nature of the syllables affected. To invent my own notation: DUO (ao) qian- with the (ao) being very small, very short, way unstressed, and taking on certain schwa-like characteristics- is generally what comes out of my mouth in markets. Either that or the 怎么卖? I’ve picked up from the Mrs.
Yeah, and what Josh said: “the difference between 孩儿and 还是”. I was thinking the exact same example. Big, big difference.
Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 8:02 am ¶Quick note.
Yes, 孩儿 and 还儿（还是） are different, but
孩儿 and 海尔 are very different as well and no one has any trouble dealing with that these days. The 儿 is not really anything except a way of representing a 方言 feature (erhuayin) that has become acceptable to write as part of ’standard written chinese/mandarin’. Apparently our attempt to write a 方言 feature （弱化) ‘lenition’ is facing stern rebuke from the choir (in addition to the chinese people I talked to about this today). Anyway, the wikipedia beijing accent phonology page (I know, not real sourcing) mentions this and it is sort of everywhere. There’s some other notes online but nothing I’ve found that is really good.
So, how do we treat a beijing 不是 which comes out as ‘ber’。 Or the ‘ber, ber’ (like an english ‘brrr’ without the drawn out rrrr) that is an alternative to ’shenme, shenme’?
Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 11:16 pm ¶@hsknotes, I would say that no one has ever had any trouble differentiating between 孩儿 and 海尔 or even our elided 还是, which was my point. The phonetics are completely different. In 孩儿, the retroflex is directly connected to the preceding phoneme remaining a single syllable, while in both 海尔 and 还是, there are two very clear and separate phonemes present. If you listen closely to the Beijing 不是 or “ber,” it’s not at all a brrr, but a buh-er, similarly with two separate syllables.
Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 9:09 am ¶Post a Comment