It's one of the most common misconceptions even advanced students have about Chinese: the belief that erhuaization is non-standard and that anyone who says 这儿 (zhèr) instead of 这 (zhè) is somehow speaking the "Beijing dialect". While this opinion rarely survives a run-in with the actual Beijing dialect, it's understandably persistent among people who have not traveled broadly in China. And it's hardly their fault: there are a ton of native speakers who don't know the difference either.

So while we usually put our focus on standard mandarin in our Chinese podcasts, in today's Chinese lesson we take a step back and showcase some examples of more unorthodox erhuaization. These are all commonly used variants you'll start hearing once you're aware of them. And while you might not want to use them yourselves each day, they're good to know - excellent little language bombs you can drop the next time you're at a state banquet and someone asks you how your Chinese is coming along.