Archive for the ‘guest posts’ Category
Woods, Pears and Jingle Bells
February 17th, 2008
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[Guest post from Sima]In the recent post Does the Beijing-R mean anything? syz gave us an example of 儿化 (érhuà) making the distinction between two words:
The érhuàyīn 儿化音 really does change things. In the first example it’s an actual difference in meaning: tāng 汤 and tāngr 汤儿 simply refer to two different liquids. The former means broth/soup, while the latter is the liquid that comes with your non-soup dishes, something cooked out of the meat or vegetables that you might spoon onto your rice. Sauce / gravy, perhaps, but incidental — not consciously made for the purpose of being sauce by itself.
This produced a merry old discussion about how érhuà 儿化 relates the meaning of different words, but buried in the original post was this:
As a bonus, in one of the examples today, tāngr 汤儿, the Beijing-R fuses with an /ng/, turning it into a truly sublime consonant. Even the spelling /ngr/ doesn’t quite do it justice, because the /r/ is so thoroughly mixed in with the /ng/ that it really becomes it’s own special sound.
Being a bit of a bright spark, I promptly suggested syz record examples of tānr and tāngr so that we could hear the difference. Being a somewhat brighter spark, he suggested I do it myself. So, for what follows, please address your complaints accordingly.
