Erhua

The basic rules controlling the surface pronunciation of erhua are as follows: • Coda • and are deleted. • is deleted and the syllable becomes nasalized. • becomes rhotacized. • Nucleus • becomes if it is an underlying . • and become rhotacized. • and become glides ( and ). • is deleted. Following the rules that coda and are deleted, noted above, the finals in the syllables (bànr) (gàir) are both ; similarly, the finals in the syllables (mèir) and (fènr) are both also . The final in (tàngr) is similar but nasalized, because of the rule that the is deleted and the syllable is nasalized. The realization of ar, i.e. the erhua of coda-less a, varies. It may be realized as , distinct from anr and air, or it may be merged with the latter two. That is, a word like may be realized with either or depending on the speaker. Because of the rule that and become glides, the finals of () and () are both , and and are both . The following chart shows how the finals are affected by the addition of this suffix: Examples • (yìpíng, one bottle) → (yìpíngr), pronounced • (gōngyuán, public garden) → (gōngyuánr), pronounced • (xiǎohái, small child) → (xiǎoháir), pronounced • (shì) (thing) → (shìr), pronounced ==Beijing dialect==

Aside from its use as a diminutive, erhua in the Beijing dialect also serves to differentiate words; for example, 'flour' and 'heroin'. Additionally, some words may sound unnatural without rhotacization, as is the case with or ( or 'flower'). • Some merge -ar (nucleus a with no coda) with -anr/-air (nucleus a with coda -i/-n), as , while others distinguish them as vs . • Some merge -er single e with erhua. with -enr/-eir, as . This may depend on phonological environments, such as the tone and the preceding consonant. • Some merge -ier and -üer with -ir/-inr and -ür/-ünr, as . • Some merge -uor with -uir/-unr, as . • Some lose the nasalization of -ngr, thus potentially merging pairs like -ir/-ingr, -enr/-engr and -angr/-anr. ==In other Mandarin varieties==

The realization and behavior of erhua are very different among Mandarin dialects. Tones are marked by the tone diacritics of the corresponding tone in Standard Chinese, and do not necessarily represent the actual realization of tones. Some rules mentioned before are still generally applied, such as the deletion of coda and and the nasalization with the coda . Certain vowels' qualities may also change. However, depending on the exact dialect, the actual behavior, rules and realization can differ greatly. Chongqing and Chengdu Erhua in Chengdu and Chongqing is collapsed to only one set: , In Chongqing, erhua can also be derogatory. Different from Beijing, erhua can be applied to people's names and kinship words, such as (diminutive of the name Cao Ying ) and 'little sister' (). Nanjing dialect Erhua causes the medial to be dropped and the (third) tone to assimilate to the (second) tone, the original tone of the morpheme . The Nanking dialect preserves the checked syllable () and thus possesses a coda . erhua checked syllables are realized with . Non-rhotic erhua Many Mandarin dialects have a handful of words exhibiting a fossilized lexical form of nasal-coda erhua. An example is 'nasal mucus', cf. the etymon . In the Malaysian Mandarin dialect, erhua is often pronounced as /ə/, due to the influence of southern Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien. ==In other Chinese languages==

Wu Wu Chinese varieties exhibit a similar phenomenon with the morpheme , generally pronounced . The erhua coda is almost always a nasal coda instead of a rhotic one. Some lects' erhua also causes vowel umlaut. The exception is Hangzhounese, which adds a er² final instead, which is phonotactically a rhotic. For example, (Shanghainese: mo-cian, 'Mahjong') is etymologically (mo-ciaq-ng 'little sparrow'), from (mo-ciaq, 'sparrow'). The syllable (ciaq, ) undergoes erhua with the morpheme (ng, ), resulting in the syllable cian , which is then represented by the homophonous but etymologically unrelated word cian . :* dei⁶-sy¹ 'crab' → dei⁶-sy¹-ng² :* tseo³ 'jujube' → tseo³-ng² • Historical nasal coda resulting in umlaut (Examples from Shanghainese)) :* ho¹ 'shrimp' → hoe¹ Yue Yue languages such as Cantonese have a small number of terms with (ji⁴, ) that exhibit tone change, such as the term (hat¹ ji⁴⁻¹, , 'beggar'). Cantonese also exhibits a diminutive formation known as changed tone () by altering the base tone contour to that of the dark rising tone (), such as the term (gwong² zau¹ waa⁶⁻², 'Cantonese'), which etymologically may be an erhua based construction. ==References==