Erhua (儿化）considered standard in Mandarin?

[chrix]

A lot of German politicians do have thick accents

The German dictionary of standard, the Duden has had a far more descriptivist stance since the 1980s, though in the wake of the 1994 orthography reform legal responsibility for formulating a standard has been turned over to an international government commission. This has led to the situation that in Germany, you can choose from three standards, the old one pre-1994, the new one after 1994 which is obligatory for school and government, and a compromise used by the mass media. That's democracy for you

About 同志: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this relates to the usage by the KMT, so it's political usage, but political in a domestic sense. I also don't see a reason why BJ dictionaries would need to note this term, unless said dictionary would record all usages specific to Taiwan... The dictionary published by the Taiwan Ministry of Education does have this meaning:

3. 泛稱非異性戀者，包括同性戀、雙性戀、跨性別等，多指同性戀者而言。

A word on standards in general:

Well, as I've said before, a standard has to be accepted by the speech community, and this can happen to varying degrees, but this per se won't make the standard "artificial". Most developed countries formulate a standard for their language to be used by government, schools, and usually mass media. English indeed is an exception here, but the rest of Europe is full of language commissions...

[Ah-Bin]

About 同志: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this relates to the usage by the KMT, so it's political usage

同志 for homosexuals is Taiwanese slang. It is, itself, a highly politicised word. I agree that dictionaries should recognise this usage, but you are reaching here.

I doubt that the KMT invented this meaning to make their opponents look bad. The "slang" explanation is better. Actually, what I wanted to emphasise was that no matter where it came from, almost everyone in China knows it and lots of people use it, but it doesn't get a mention in PRC dictionaries for political reasons. Imagine if English dictionaries had to define "gay" as just "happy" without acknowledging its other meaning.

I was thinking about the issue again, whether strongly prescriptivist language policies are necessarily connected to authoritarian regimes obsessed with national unity. I thought of Franco's Spain first, but then I remembered that France is actually far more prescriptivist than Spain as far as language matters go, and teachers in democratic France were just as likely to punish kids for speaking patois as those of fascist Spain...so that argument doesn't really work.

I think I'll just have to admit that I'm cranky and I don't like the PRC standard for purely personal reasons!

[chrix]

Sorry, I might have not expressed clearly here: what I meant was that the KMT, originally following a similar Leninist cadre leadership model like the CCP, also referred to its members as comrades, and the slang use came from the use within the KMT in Taiwan, and wasn't directed necessarily towards the CCP...

[Shi Tong]

Out of curiosity, is there a word for homosexual in any Chinese dictionaries? I think most people only know tong zhi, and I'm not sure there's any other term for it.

This doesn't really have anything to do with erhua!

[imron]

同性恋 is the formal term.

[Don_Horhe]

There's also 兔子, but AFAIK it's rarely used in this sense.

[renzhe]

The trick about 同志 is that it can mean gay, buy only in the right context. Sort of like "brother" can mean "black man" in certain contexts in the US, but it's not the first association.

On the mainland, you can use 同志 to address policemen, public workers, etc. It's becoming less common nowadays, but the word is still actively used in many contexts on the mainland, whereas it isn't used anymore in Taiwan.

I agree that most mainland people know this meaning, but it is far less loaded than it is in Taiwan.

[imron]

I agree that most mainland people know this meaning

I wouldn't even say most. My guess would be the majority of the 40 and over crowd wouldn't really be familiar with this usage, at least in northern China. I used to hear 同志 used all the time in the north (Hebei and Beijing), but never in the context of homosexual. Usually it was either used as a polite form of address for police officers/soldiers, or it was used jokingly to mimic the way people did/said things before China began its reforms.

[vampire]

There's also 兔子, but AFAIK it's rarely used in this sense.

I think 兔子 means male prostitute, not gay, and its taiwan version is 牛郎

[Don_Horhe]

From Wikipedia:

Tùzi 兔子 lit., "bunny," but used to refer to catamites. (See Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese-English Dictionary, entry 12,122) See also Tu Er Shen.

I remember asking one of my teachers about this and initially she didn't know that 兔子 had a secondary meaning. A few days later she told me she had asked around and that it does mean 'gay' as well, but that it's not a popular term.

[Shi Tong]

Hello.

Thanks for the tong2 xing4 lian4 above. I kept racking my brain yesterday for the "right" term, and I couldn't remember the right pronunciation or tones for it because it's pretty seldom used. My wife filled me in later.

She actually said that tong2 zhi4 is also a term for homosexual and that it wasn't really a bad term to use. She is of the younger generation though, which may mean it's lost it's possibly political element.

[chrix]

Here's an example from a Taiwanese newspaper quoting a witness using 那, not 那裡:

「根本不知道那邊會放煙火，知道怎麼敢站在那。」

Read the entire article here

[Shi Tong]

I've been having some thoughts about this.

I wonder if Taiwanese people tend to miss out the er sometimes, but not meaning that it's "not there".

What I mean by this, and I hope this doesn't come across as too crude a method of description, but, this is what is used for different circumstances:

When people say ne (as in "there"), it comes out as ㄋㄜ.

When people say na/r (as in "where"), it comes out as ㄋㄚ.

When people say erzi (as in "son"), it comes out in two forms- ㄦㄗ, and some peopel say something much closer to ㄜㄗ.

My thinking is that ㄋㄜ and ㄋㄚare already different enough to show you that one means "where" and the other means "there", "li" is added to emphasise the fact that it's missing an ㄦ.

Am I going crazy or does ㄋㄚmean "where" and ㄋㄜ mean "there" without having to add the erhua? This is what I was taught.. even if it is wrong!!?:mrgreen:

[Daan]

I think you're overlooking the tones here, since that's what will make the difference clear to native speakers, not the 兒化. There is an obvious difference to any native speaker between náli or nǎr 'where' and nàli or nàr 'there'. This applies to nǎ 'where/which' and nà 'there/that' as well. I don't think I've ever heard ně 'where/which' which I would however still expect to exist. nè 'there/that' does exist as far as I can tell.

Edit: And of course there's also the pairs něi 'which' / nèi 'that' and něibian 'where' / nèibian 'there'.

[Shi Tong]

I think you're overlooking the tones here, since that's what will make the difference clear to native speakers, not the 兒化. There is an obvious difference to any native speaker between náli or nǎr 'where' and nàli or nàr 'there'. This applies to nǎ 'where/which' and nà 'there/that' as well. I don't think I've ever heard ně 'where/which' which I would however still expect to exist. nè 'there/that' does exist as far as I can tell.

Edit: And of course there's also the pairs něi 'which' / nèi 'that' and něibian 'where' / nèibian 'there'.

Of course, the tones make a big difference.

Tell me, do you think that the "ná" in "náli" and the "nà" in "nàli" are pronounced the same?

In my experience they're pronounced differently- ㄋㄚsecond tone for "where", and ㄋㄜ fouth tone for "there".

So everyone that I speak to says zai (4th tone) ㄋㄚ(2nd tone) li (light tone)? and the answer is alwaysㄋㄜ(4th tone) li (light tone).

The question can also be zai ㄋㄚ(3rd tone), and replied as "zai ㄋㄜ (4th tone)".

This for me clears to subject up, since ne and na are quesition and answers, not both, IMO.

Not many people use nei IMO.

Another thing is that people sometimes ask which one, which is ㄋㄚ(2) yi(1) ge(light)?

To which is the answer is always nèi ge. Bleh.. so many complications for asking which and where! haha!!

[Daan]

Tell me, do you think that the "ná" in "náli" and the "nà" in "nàli" are pronounced the same?

If we ignore the tonal difference, then yes, they are pronounced exactly the same, namely [nɑ] in IPA.

In my experience they're pronounced differently- ㄋㄚsecond tone for "where", and ㄋㄜ fouth tone for "there".

So everyone that I speak to says zai (4th tone) ㄋㄚ(2nd tone) li (light tone)? and the answer is alwaysㄋㄜ(4th tone) li (light tone).

So you're saying that everyone you know says say zài náli 'where' but zài nèli 'there'? Pronunciations of 哪 and 那 vary across dialects and accents, but are otherwise generally in free variation, I think. As far as I know, 那 can be read as nà, nèi and nè. 哪 can be read as nǎ and něi. One would also expect a form ? ně but I've never heard that one. And neither is nèli a form I've ever heard, but again, your mileage may vary. However, in my experience individual speakers tend to be pretty consistent in their choices, so I would be surprised to hear a native speaker pronounce 哪 as nǎ but 那 as nè. Do you happen to have any recordings you could post?

Not many people use nei IMO.

Well, that depends on where the speakers you tend to interact with are from. I can assure you my former teacher, who spoke southern Mainland Mandarin, said only něi and nèi.

Edited March 5, 2010 at 03:59 PM by Daan

[chrix]

Segments are pronounced slightly differently depending on tone, for instance the fourth tone often leads to creaky voice and vowel quality might be otherwise slightly different, but surely not as much as Shi Tong suggests. I've been meaning to dig up some stuff on this topic, but haven't time yet

[Shi Tong]

Hello Daan,

I dont have any files or anything which I can post, but I can record myself and post that I suppose.

I assure you that in Taiwan, people do say these things in this way. I've been conversing with my wife for 9 years using this method, so I'm sure this is correct for Taiwan!

The reason that I posted it here about erhua though, was because I think that maybe ㄋㄚis a kind of overhang from when people added a strong er at the end of the word, which is an erhua thing.

Oh, and interesting that your teacher used nei for everything!! Not really bumped into many nei users!

[renzhe]

Every single person from the Mainland I've ever met has used nei almost exclusively, unless they were reading a text outloud.

Of course, this only applies to the "which/that" meaning, not other meanings, which tend to be "na".

I've noticed the same thing with shei/shui.

[chrix]

Shi Tong, the question is not whether you have been saying it that way, but if native speakers other than your wife have actually been saying it that way.

My own experience in Taiwan matches Daan's, but FWIW, 那 nè is a colloquial variant according to my dictionary, while this is not available for 哪

renzhe, are you saying that they all say nèili? That would be interesting, seeing that nèi comes from a contraction of 那一.

EDIT:

I think we need to be very careful in distinguishing between:

1. 那 adverb "so"

2. a. 那裡 b. 那邊 c. 那兒 d. 那 "there"

3. a. 哪裡 b. 哪邊 c. 哪兒 d. 哪 "where"

4. 那個 "this"

5. 哪個 "which"

6. 那麼 "that + Adj"

7. 那個 "hesitational particle"

because I think na, nei, ne are not in complete free variation. Maybe with this numbering 1-6 it'll be easier for us to discuss...

Edited March 9, 2010 at 01:55 PM by chrix