- What is Erhua (suffixation of a non-syllabic r to a word)?
Beijing dialect is the basic dialect of Putonghua. Erhua is one of the characters of the northern dialect. Erhua means the suffixation of er to a word. The suffix er is originally an independent syllable. As it has been joined to the end of other syllables and pronounced in the light tone for a long time in oral Chinese, it was tonally modified and lost its independence with only an action of bending the tongue tip. Thus the two syllables are joined together and make one syllable and the first syllable will be modified more or less. This phenomenon is called Erhua and the retroflex yunmu is called "Erhuayun". Though the Erhua syllable is expressed in two Chinese characters, it is in fact pronounced as one syllable. To express it in Pinyin, just add an r behind the yunmu, e.g. hu¨¡r.
There are two cases in the Erhua of yunmu. In the first case, the original yunmu will not change after Erhua, e.g. h¨¤om¨£r, m¨£r is an Erhua syllable but the yunmu is still "a". The other case is the original yunmu will change after Erhua, e.g. sh¨´g¨¥nr, the yunwei n of g¨¥n has been omitted and the word is actually pronounced as sh¨´¨À¨¥r.
Erhua makes some yunmu change and thus some syllables with different pronunciation have the same pronunciation after Erhua. For example, "Õë(zh¨¥n)" and "Ö¦(zh¨©)" are different characters. But after Erhua, they share the same pronunciation "zh¨¥r".
Usually all yunmu in Putonghua can be Erhua except e, er and ueng.
Main functions of Erhua:
- To express the feeling of love, e.g. n¨·h¨¢ir (Å®º¢¶ù), h¨®nghu¨¡r (ºì»¨¶ù);
- To describe the character of smallness, e.g. y¨¬di¨£nr (Ò»µã¶ù), xi¨£om¨«r (СÃ׶ù);
- To decide the nature of a word. If a word can be both a verb and a noun or can be both an adjective and a noun, it must be a noun after Erhua. For example, ¸Ç¶ù (lid) and ¼â¶ù (tip).
- To differentiate the meanings of a word. For example, Í· (t¨®u) means head while Í·¶ù (t¨®ur) means the leader; °×Ãæ (b¨¢imi¨¤n) means flour and °×Ãæ¶ù (b¨¢imi¨¤nr) usually means heroin.
- How many kinds of modifications to the auxiliary word of mood "°¡ (a)"?
"°¡ (a)" is a syllable expressing mood and feeling. When it is at the beginning of a sentence or is pronounced individually, it shall be pronounced as "a"; when it is at the end of a sentence, it usually has the following modifications due to the effect of the last phoneme of the syllable before it.
When the last phoneme of the syllable before °¡ (a) is a, o, e, ¨º, i and ¨¹, °¡ should be pronounced as [ya], and written in Chinese character °¡ or ѽ.
For example:
- sh¨¬ t¨¡ ya!
- y¨¤o zh¨´ y¨¬ ji¨¦ yu¨¥ ya!
- zh¨¥n du¨ ya!
- y¨¤o h¨£o hao xu¨¦ x¨ª ya!
- du¨ x¨©n de ch¨¥ ya!
- h¨£o d¨¤ de y¨· ya!
When the last phoneme of the syllable before °¡ is u (including ao and iao), °¡ should be pronounced as [wa], and written in Chinese character °¡ or ÍÛ.
For example:
- z¨¤i n¨£r zh¨´ wa?
- zh¨¥n h¨£o wa!
- d¨¡ ji¨¡ ti¨¤o wa!
When the last phoneme of the syllable before °¡is n, °¡ should be pronounced as [na], and written in Chinese character °¡ or ÄÄ.
For example:
- z¨§n me b¨¤n na?
- ji¨¡ y¨®u g¨¤n na!
- y¨¤o xi¨£o x¨©n na!
When the last phoneme of the syllable before °¡ is ng, °¡ should be pronounced as [n¨Àa], and written in Chinese character °¡.
For example:
- d¨¤ ji¨¡ ch¨¤ng nga!
- r¨¨n zh¨¥n t¨©ng n¨Àa!
- w¨£ng sh¨¤ng ch¨ng n¨Àa!
When the yunmu of the syllable before °¡ is a vowel -i and the shengmu is zh, ch, sh or r, °¡ should be pronounced as [ra], and written in Chinese character °¡.
For example:
- zh¨¨ sh¨¬ y¨ª ji¨¤n d¨¤ sh¨¬ ra!
- ku¨¤i ch¨© ra!
When the yunmu of the syllable before °¡ is a vowel -i and the shengmu is z, c or s, °¡ should be pronounced as [za].
For example:
- q¨´ gu¨° j¨« c¨¬ za?
- t¨¡ c¨¢i sh¨ª s¨¬ za!
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