Comments on: Sticky rice dumplingy http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/02/sticky-rice-dumplingy/?&owa_medium=feed&owa_sid= Home of the Beijing Sounds Studios: productions mostly of language through foreign ears Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:08:32 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Josh http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/02/sticky-rice-dumplingy/comment-page-1/#comment-12640 Josh Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:09:54 +0000 http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/?p=441#comment-12640 @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. @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.

]]> By: hsknotes http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/02/sticky-rice-dumplingy/comment-page-1/#comment-12573 hsknotes Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:16:28 +0000 http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/?p=441#comment-12573 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'? 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’?

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