Beijing Dialect - Phonology

Phonology

In fundamental structure, the phonology of the Beijing dialect and Standard Chinese are almost identical. In part, this is because the pronunciation of Standard Chinese was based on Beijing pronunciation. (See Standard Chinese for its phonology charts; the same basic structure applies to the Beijing dialect.)

However, some striking differences exist. Most prominent is the proliferation of rhotic vowels. All rhotic vowels are the result of the use of the -儿 /-ɻ/, a noun suffix, except for a few words pronounced /ɑɻ/ that do not have this suffix. In Standard Chinese, these also occur but much less often than they appear in Beijing dialect. This phenomenon is known as érhuà (儿化) or rhotacization, as is considered one of the iconic characteristics of Beijing Mandarin.

When /w/ occurs in syllable-initial position, many speakers use before any vowel except as in 我 wǒ, e.g. 尾巴 wěiba .

Moreover, Beijing dialect has a few phonetic reductions that are usually considered too "colloquial" for use in Standard Chinese. For example, in fast speech, initial consonants go through lenition if they are in an unstressed syllable: pinyin ⟨zh ch sh⟩ /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ/ become ⟨r⟩ /ɻ/, so 不知道 bùzhīdào "don't know" can sound like bùrdào; ⟨j q x⟩ /tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ become ⟨y⟩ /j/, so 赶紧去 gǎnjǐnqù "go quickly" can sound like gǎnyǐnqù; pinyin ⟨b d g⟩ /p t k/ go through voicing to become ; similar changes also occur on other consonants. Also, final -⟨n⟩ /-n/ and (less frequently) -⟨ng⟩ /-ŋ/ can fail to close entirely, so that a nasal vowel is pronounced instead of a nasal stop; for example, 您 nín ends up sounding like (nasalized), instead of as in Standard Chinese:

Some of these changes yield syllables that violate the syllable structure of Standard Chinese, such as 大柵欄 Dà Zhàlán Street, which locals pronounce as Dàshilàr.

The tones of Beijing dialect tend to be more exaggerated than Standard Chinese. In Standard Chinese, the four tones are high flat, high rising, low dipping, and falling; in Beijing dialect, the first two tones are higher, the third one dips more prominently, and the fourth one falls more.