没事(儿)

O

Obi1

Banned
English - Pakistan
I was talking to a Chinese friend yesterday and said 没事 to him. He gave me a puzzled look. When I told him I was trying to say "It doesn't matter" he said, "Ah! You mean 没事儿."

I mean he added 儿化 to the end of 没事.

Does this mean that it is wrong not to add 儿化 to 没事, just like in 一会儿 and 一块儿? Obviously I am talking about standard Mandarin (普通话).
 
    • 儿化 is complicated.

    Sometimes no matter whether you add 儿化 or not, it means the same. But sometimes it means different. ..

    What makes it more complicated is that to different ears the rule of adding 儿化 could be different.

    To my ears, both 没事 and 没事儿 have a same meaning. I have a personal taste to say 没事儿 though.
     
    zwxsnake said:
    Grammatically, they are both correct.

    To me, 没事 sounds more serious than 没事儿。If you are good friends, say 没事儿 would be better.
    Click to expand...

    If they are both equally correct in 普通话 then I wonder why that Chinese guy didn't understand me. He understood everything else I said in Chinese!
     
    fish_cat said:
    In north China, people usually use" 没事儿”
    In south China, people use "没关系"
    Click to expand...

    agree with fish_cat. I come from north China and we say /meishir/, but I have a classmate who's a southerner and said /meishi/ to me one day. In fact, some of my southern classmates still are not accustomed to 儿化, and some of them even think it strange when they actually pronounced 儿化 after staying in Beijing for a long period.

    Therefore, I don't think 儿化 should be included in "standard Mandarin". You could listen to news report in CCTV and see that the announcers hardly 儿化。

    This is a really interesting linguistic question. Hope this helpful. :p
     
    Obi1 said:
    If they are both equally correct in 普通话 then I wonder why that Chinese guy didn't understand me. He understood everything else I said in Chinese!
    Click to expand...
    For example, if you've added r-coloring to other words in your speeches, but not to this one, people would feel confused.
    It's ok to have some accent, as long as we keep it consistant. But if you are not a native speaker, your accents and styles may not be so stable, that's when people get confused.
    Or, maybe a native speaker would usually give another reply, 没事 was not expected. It sounds similar to 没试, 美食, 美式 etc., so it was much easier to confuse people than 没事儿.
    There are always unofficial norms, set rules, accents and fixed habits in different regions. "Standard Mandarin" accepts both 没事 and 没事儿, but it doesn't mean one can switch them randomly.
     
    Last edited:
    Well, I don't agree the last part. Of course them can be switched randomly.
    R-colouring should not be the problem in the Mandarin conversation context, but pronunciation is the problem
    As mentioned, 没事(mei2 shi4) sounds similar to 美食(mei3 shi2), 美式(mei3 shi4). People will get confused is because different pronunciation leads to different meaning.
    Therefore, working on pronunciation harder is better then focusing on r-colouring.
     
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