Erhua

Erhua (simplified Chinese: 儿化; traditional Chinese: 兒化 [ɚ˧˥xwä˥˩]); also called "erization" or "rhotacization of syllable finals"^[1]) is a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the er (儿; 兒 [ɚ]) sound to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. Erhuayin (儿化音; 兒化音) is the pronunciation of "er" after rhotacization of syllable finals.

It is common in most varieties of Mandarin as a diminutive suffix for nouns, though some dialects also use it for other grammatical purposes. The Standard Chinese spoken in government-produced educational and examination recordings features erhua to some extent, as in 哪儿 nǎr 'where', 一点儿 yìdiǎnr 'a little', and 好玩儿 hǎowánr 'fun'. Colloquial speech in many northern dialects has more extensive erhua than the standardized language. Southwestern Mandarin dialects such as those of Chongqing and Chengdu also have erhua. By contrast, many Southern Chinese who speak their own languages may have difficulty pronouncing the sound or may simply prefer not to pronounce it, and usually avoid words with erhua when speaking Standard Chinese; for example, the three examples listed above may be replaced with the synonyms 哪里 nǎlǐ, 一点 yìdiǎn, 好玩 hǎowán. Furthermore, erhua is extremely rare or absent in Taiwanese Mandarin speakers.^[2][3]

Only a small number of words in standardized Mandarin, such as 二 èr 'two' and 耳 ěr 'ear' have r-colored vowels that do not result from the erhua process. All of the non-erhua r-colored syllables have no initial consonant, and are traditionally pronounced [ɚ] in Beijing dialect and in conservative varieties. In the recent decades, the vowel in the toned syllable er, especially èr, has been lowered in many accents, making the syllable come to approach or acquire a quality like ar—i.e. [äʵ]~[ɐʵ] with the appropriate tone.

In some publications, particularly those on Chinese linguistics, the 儿; 兒 in terms with erhua is written with a smaller size to distinguish its non-syllabic nature. This also distinguishes it from the same character being used as a noun meaning 'son'. This practice may have been introduced by Yuen Ren Chao. The small-sized characters have been proposed to Unicode^[4] and provisionally assigned by Unicode in 2024.^[5]