Do people in different parts of China pronounce the sound "er" differently?
I am very confused about the sound "er" in Chinese. For years I have pronounced it like the sound "er" at the end of the English word "her". I said it this way all through university like this and was never corrected or misunderstood. However, today when I was teaching a Chinese person English, I mentioned I was learning to play 二胡 and they didn't understand me. They pronounced "er" more like the English sound "r" .
I checked a few words containing the "er" sound in various talking dictionaries, and found it did not sound the same in all of them.
Do you think this sound should sound like "er" as in "her" or "r"? Does it sound different depending on whereabouts in China someone is from?
On the link below, I will demonstrate the two ways I have heard this sound pronounced.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1OJTeGVQCb2
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 6
1
The sound in English that is closest to the 二 in Mandarin might be /ʌr/. It must be noted that the /ʌ/ should be pronounced extremely quickly.
0
Of course people in different parts of China pronounce it differently. As for me, I just pronounce it like the character 而, without the Beijing 'Er hua'. (See wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua). Btw, I speak standard Mandarin, because my parents used to move a lot when I was a small boy, which prevented me from taking any local accent. In Standard Mandarin, any character with an 'er' is pronounced WITHOUT the 'er hua'.
However, most people in North China, especially in places like the Hebei province and the three provinces in the North East of China, do pronounce it with the 'er hua'. ATTENTION: although Standard Mandarin is considered to be based on the Beijing Accent, it does not take the 'er hua' into the standard.
Astonishingly, people in South China, especially those living to the south of the Yangtze River, make an somewhat antique pronunciation of the 'er'. They say the word like 'yi', and the tones differ from places to places significantly. In Guangzhou and HongKong, people say 'one' as 'ya', 'two' as 'yi', instead of 'er'.
Since now Standard Mandarin is the lingua franca of all China, everybody can understand the meaning of 'er' and the pronunciation 'yi' loses its significance.
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Mandarin is " r " for sure
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er or r , both of them are right. You can definitely pronounece it as you like. Dont be confused.
0
Hey, your question is quite interesting. Everyone got accent so their pronunciation may have a lot difference. For example I come from North of China so when I say"二胡” it is more like "r". But if you speak to a person from South of China they may say it like "er".
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