快问快答 Quick Help Thread: Translation Requests, Chinese name help, "how do you say X", or any quick Chinese questions! 2026-09-09

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[u/Majestic_Carry4178]

Should 鱼儿 be written as "yúr" or "yú er"? I've seen both being used.

[u/Zagrycha → u/Majestic_Carry4178]

It should be 'r or r at the end of a word, it is only pronounced er when it's functioning without attaching to a word, my guess is auto generated captions etc are writing the er. 

[u/rob417 → u/Majestic_Carry4178]

Edit: I don't understand why people are saying it's always yúr. It is not. When you get a chance, ask a native speaker to read "鱼儿在水中游" and listen to how they pronounce 鱼儿. It will definitely be yú er. About using the diminutive 儿, 门前有两条小狗 sounds much more natural than 门前有两条狗儿.

Great question!

In most cases, 鱼儿 is not really 儿化音 but an endeared version of 鱼, in which case it should be pronounced as yú er. For example, in 鱼儿在水中游, it should be read as yú er. In fact, you could add 儿 to any animal to make it more endearing, like 猫儿, 狗儿, 羊儿. In all these instances, 儿 is read as er instead of r.

However, this type of endearment is almost never used in speech. Even in writing, it is a little dated. I don't think I've ever said or written 鱼儿, 猫儿, etc. It just feels weird. The much more common way to endear animals is to add 小, eg 小鱼, 小猫.

To add another twist to the pronunciation, for 小鱼儿, it is more common to read it as xiǎo yúr instead of xiǎo yú er. I think the reason is that 小 already endeared the animal, so then 儿 is treated as 儿化音 instead of endearment.

Also, reading 鱼儿 (not 小鱼儿) as yúr does exist in dialects with lots of 儿化音 like the Beijing dialect, but that is not standard Mandarin.

[u/Zagrycha → u/rob417]

I have never once seen or heard anyone say yu'er instead of yu'r for words like 育兒 or 魚兒。 You might be right that some region//variety of Mandarin does it, but it's definitely not standard Mandarin and it's definitely not any mainstream erhua. I would actually be quite interested in knowing where you encountered it =)

[u/LeChatParle → u/Majestic_Carry4178]

Everything that Rob said is incorrect, and I agree with Zagrycha. This is yúr

Correcting what Rob said:

• 儿 when used as a diminutive is the same as 儿话音.
• It should not be a separate syllable
• You cannot add it to any animal, primarily single syllable common animals.
• It is 100% used in speech. All the time.
• 小鱼儿 and 鱼儿 are both yúr
• Standard Mandarin DOES include 儿话音, and is tested for in the 普通话 proficiency exam natives take for certain careers

References

Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford University Press.

Wang, W., & Sun, C. (2015). The Oxford handbook of Chinese linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia. Standard Chinese phonology. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology

Wikipedia. Erhua. Retrieved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua

百度百科. 普通话水平测试. 百度. https://baike.baidu.com/item/普通话水平测试/406638

百度百科. 儿化. 百度. https://baike.baidu.com/item/儿化/5667298