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'Érhuà' (儿化) refers to the r-coloring or addition of the "ér"(儿) sound (transcribed in IPA as ) to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. It is most common in the speeches of North China as a tool of diminution. The Standard Mandarin spoken in government-produced educational and examination recordings features erhua to some extent, as in 哪儿(nǎr), 一点儿(yìdiǎnr), or 好玩儿(hǎowánr), though Southern Chinese usually have difficulty in pronouncing and therefore avoid these words, replacing them with 哪里(nǎlǐ), 一点(yìdiǎn), or 好玩(hǎowán).
#In a small number of words, such as 二 "two", 耳 "ear", etc. All of these words are pronounced as with no initial consonant.
#As a noun suffix (Traditional: -兒, Simplified: -儿). The suffix combines with the final, and regular but complex changes occur as a result.
The basic rules controlling the surface pronunciation of erhua are as follows:

★ Coda [i] and [n] are deleted.

★ Coda is deleted, but the syllable becomes nasalized.

★ Main vowels [i] and [y] become glides and have a added, which is rhoticized as [ɚ].

★ Certain vowels are changed: [a] becomes ; [e], and become ; in the finals and becomes (but it remains in the finals and ).
The following chart shows how the finals from the above chart are affected by the addition of this suffix:

Nucleus	Coda (+rhotic)	Medial
		Ø	style="background:#efefef"	style="background:#efefef"	style="background:#efefef"|
rowspan=5 style="background:#efefef"	style="background:#efefef"|Ø
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
rowspan=5 style="background:#efefef"	style="background:#efefef"|Ø
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
style="background:#efefef"
Ø

The behavior of retroflexed finals provides some evidence for the phonemic analysis of main vowels. The fact that and become and confirms their analysis as /ian/ and /yan/ (rather than and ), and the differing behavior of and [i] suggests that these should not be merged (contrary to Pinyin). The behavior of
and , however, is problematic, since it suggests that they should not be merged, contrary to most analyses. (An alternative, consistent with retroflex behavior, would be to merge and as a single phoneme and maintain as a separate phoneme occurring only in a single final. Some evidence for this comes from standard Beijing pronunciation, where and are simple vowels but "" is actually a complex diphthong, pronounced approximately as -- a combination of the vowels in Standard American "put" and "putt"}}.)

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Examples

Examples

★ 一瓶(yìpíng) → 一瓶儿(yìpíngr), pronounced "yìpírng"

★ 公园(gōngyuán) →　公园儿(gōngyuánr), pronounced "gōngyuár"

★ 小孩(xiǎohái) → 小孩儿(xiǎoháir), pronounced "xǐaohár"

★ 事 (shì) → 事儿(shìr), pronounced "shèr"