Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese (^t廣東話, ^s广东话; originally known as ^t廣州話, ^s广州话), is the dialect of Yue Chinese spoken in the vicinity of Canton in southern China. It is the traditional prestige dialect of Yue.

Cantonese is the language of the Cantonese people. Inside mainland China, it is a lingua franca in Guangdong Province and some neighbouring areas, such as the eastern part of Guangxi Province. It is the majority language of Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta region of China. It is also traditionally the most spoken variety of Chinese among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore) and the Western world, especially Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and the United States.

While the term Cantonese refers narrowly to the prestige variety described in this article, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue branch of Chinese, including related dialects such as Taishanese. When standard Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified as one variant, there are about 80 million total speakers.

Yue or Yueh (English pronunciation: /ˈjuːeɪ/ or /juːˈeɪ/) is a primary branch of Chinese spoken in South China, particularly the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.

The name Cantonese is often used for the whole branch, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for the variety of Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong, which is the prestige dialect. Cantonese and Taishanese are spoken by substantial overseas populations in Southeast Asia, Australia, and Northern America, particularly as a result of waves of mass migrations from Hong Kong.

Yue dialects are not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Chinese. They are among the most conservative varieties with regard to the final consonants and tonal categories of Middle Chinese, but have lost several distinctions in the initial and medial consonants that other Chinese varieties have retained.

Names

The prototypical use of the name Cantonese in English is for the Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of Yue, but it is commonly used for Yue as a whole. To avoid confusion, academic texts may call the primary branch of Chinese "Yue", following the Mandarin pinyin spelling, and either restrict "Cantonese" to its common usage as the dialect of Guangzhou, or avoid the term "Cantonese" altogether and distinguish Yue from Canton or Guangzhou dialect.

Cantonese is a language spoken primarily in south China.

Cantonese may also refer to:

See also