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I'm trying out LiveMocha (linked from orangutan's link below). The very first lesson contains the word 女 孩 (nu hai; girl). The way the speaker pronounces it sounds like "nu har." Is this the famous Beijing R-appending dialect? (Or am I just mishearing it?) And if it is erhua, it seems different from the regular 儿 suffix, in that it becomes har and not hai-r. Again: am I mishearing it, or is there a reason for this?

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"女 孩儿" gets plenty of hits on Google, so I think your diagnosis is correct. The erhua often affects the pronunciation of the preceding rhyme; in particular, the 'i' in 'ai' is dropped. Wikipedia has a thorough article on this.

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