pronunciation/word for little/ a bit

meir

September 02, 2010, 02:44 PM posted in General Discussion

There was a sentence I was listening to on a CD that was illustrating the word for a little or a bit. It is audio only...no notes. It sounds like they are saying (transliterated) ee dee ar. The question is , is this really the word

一点 yi 1dian 3 but with a local pronunciation or is there a different word with this "dee ar" pronunciation.

meir

September 02, 2010, 02:54 PM

sigh,,,i don't know why it put in all of those formatting messages after I pasted in the character, but in short is there a word that is pronounced (transliterated) "ee dee ar" that is not the word yi4 dian3 or is yi4 dee ar 3 just a different localized pronunciation of yi4 dian3?

go_manly

September 02, 2010, 09:50 PM

yìdiǎn is 一点

yìdiǎnr is 一点儿

I'm not sure how much of the language you have seen, but 儿 is added to the end of many words, particularly in Northern China. It is the only non-syllabic suffix.

In some cases the meaning is changed, such as when 哪 (na3 - which) becomes 哪儿 (na3r - where). In most cases the meaning is not changed.

With regards to formatting, that happens whenever you paste from Word. There was a special button for pasting from Word, but they removed it because they said it caused conflicts. I don't understand that, because on any other site I've tried, you can paste directly from Word without getting this rubbish.

meir

September 06, 2010, 12:57 PM

Thanks so much for your reply, later I found the word yìdiǎnr listed in pinyin among the list of potential words on the cd, i thought it was a printing mistake!

As a beginner , I have never seen words with an R added to the end like that. Is that common? Is there a reason or special meaning when they do that? (similar perhaps to when verbs in , say Spanish, add a reflexive ending to them to make them an action that reflects back on a person such as "dress oneself" instead of just "to dress"?)