Question
zukin1605
17 Sep 2021

  • Vietnamese
  • Simplified Chinese (China)
Question about Simplified Chinese (China)

In Chinese, many words go before 儿 such as:
这儿、那儿、块儿、会儿、点儿、玩儿、…
sometimes I hear people say these words without 儿 with the same meaning.
Eg:
现在是5点
现在是5 点儿

What is the difference? How will we use 儿?
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Answers
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namaeganai
17 Sep 2021

  • Simplified Chinese (China)

We usually don’t say 5点儿. Just 点 for hours

See a translation
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tiebutou
19 Sep 2021

  • Simplified Chinese (China)

Roughly speaking, Northerners of China speak with 儿，and majority of southerners don't.（it's not strict to say so, for instance Sichuan province is belived to be a south area, while they use this , but those that are very south, like Guang dong, they really don't.）

儿 , for many Chinese people, I believe, sounds pretty dialectal, you barely hear it in cases like news, weather broadcasts, because their announcers use standard mandarin, which was created based on north dialects but doesn't totally accord with them. In most cases, Being with 儿 or without it don't make any differences in meaning, like you may say 冰棍儿 for popsicle, and 冰棍 is also correct(Though it sounds a little bit weird, for the southerners who don't use 儿, they may say 冰棒，棍and棒means roughly same thing: stick）, summing up, if you would like to learn some north dialects instead of mandarin, it's necessary to get the hang of it, because some of the northerners, like Beijingers, they might really not understand you if you remove the 儿 while speaking(Though I haven't tested yet lol); if you'd like to learn standard mandarin without using 儿, you may need to learn some words
that don't have 儿s in them, like the example cited above（冰棍儿），to make you sound more natural.

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In Chinese, many words go before 儿 such as: 这儿、那儿、块儿、会儿、点儿、玩儿、… sometimes I hear people say these words without 儿 with the same meaning. Eg: 现在是5点 现在是5 点儿 What is the difference? How will we use 儿?
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