Cantonese is a language within the Chinese language family originating from the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) and its surrounding area in Southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group, which has over 80 million native speakers. While the term "Cantonese" specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible languages and dialects such as Taishanese. Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of Southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas communities.
Introduction
Cantonese
Cantonese | Introduction
Guangzhou and its surrounding area in Southeastern China. Guangzhou and its surrounding area in Southeastern China;  Hong Kong and Macau Southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau Southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau
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He was an Australian international cricketer.
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where was he born?
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Cootamundra, New South Wales (NSW).
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what is the climate like in the latter?
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Arid to semi arid climate with rainfall.
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what languages are spoken here?
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English, Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Greek.
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Post-handover governments have promoted Mandarin, which is currently about as prevalent as English; 48.6 per cent of the population speaks Mandarin, with 1.9 per cent native speakers and 46.7 per cent speaking it as a second language. Traditional Chinese characters are used in writing, rather than the simplified characters used on the mainland. Among the religious population, the traditional "three teachings" of China, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, have the most adherents (20 per cent), and are followed by Christianity (12 per cent) and Islam (4 per cent). Followers of other religions, including Sikhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and the Baháʼí Faith, generally originate from regions where their religion predominates.
Hong Kong | Demographics
However, more recent immigrants are arriving from the rest of mainland China and Taiwan and most often speak Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) as their native language, although some may also speak their native local variety, such as Shanghainese, Hokkien, Fuzhounese, Hakka, etc. As a result, Mandarin is becoming more common among the Chinese American community.
Cantonese | United States
Chinese is the third most widely spoken non-English language in the United States when both Cantonese and Mandarin are combined, behind Spanish and French. Many institutes of higher education have traditionally had Chinese programs based on Cantonese, with some continuing to offer these programs despite the rise of Mandarin. The most popular romanization for learning Cantonese in the United States is Yale Romanization. The majority of Chinese emigrants have traditionally originated from Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as Hong Kong and Macao (beginning in the latter half of the 20th century and before the Handover) and Southeast Asia, with Cantonese as their native language.
Cantonese | United States
In Indonesia, Cantonese is locally known as "Konghu" and is one of the variants spoken by the Chinese Indonesian community, with speakers largely concentrated in major cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya and Batam. However, it has a relatively minor presence compared to other Southeast Asian nations, being the fourth most spoken Chinese variety after Hokkien, Hakka and Teochew.
Cantonese | Indonesia
In mainland China, it is the "lingua franca" of the province of Guangdong (being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. It is the dominant and co-official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese is also widely spoken amongst Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as in Singapore and Cambodia to a lesser extent) and throughout the Western world. Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary with Mandarin, the two Sinitic languages are mutually unintelligible, largely because of lexical differences, but also due to differences in grammar and pronunciation.
Cantonese | Introduction
The languages most commonly spoken are Cantonese and the Chaoshan dialect.
Dahao | Language
Due to the linguistic history of Hong Kong and Macau, and the use of Cantonese in many established overseas Chinese communities, the use of Cantonese is quite widespread compared to the presence of its speakers residing in China. Cantonese is the predominant Chinese variety spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. In these areas, public discourse takes place almost exclusively in Cantonese, making it the only variety of Chinese other than Mandarin to be used as an official language in the world. Because of their dominance in Chinese diaspora overseas, standard Cantonese and its dialect Taishanese are among the most common Chinese languages that one may encounter in the West.
Cantonese | Cultural role
Chinese languages, mostly Cantonese, are collectively the third most-spoken language in the United States, and are mostly spoken within Chinese-American populations and by immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, especially in California and New York. Over 2 million Americans speak varieties of Chinese, with Mandarin becoming increasingly common due to immigration from mainland China and to some extent Taiwan. Despite being called dialects or varieties, Cantonese, Taishanese, and Mandarin etc. are not mutually intelligible. When asked census forms and surveys, respondents will only answer with "Chinese". According to data reported on the 2000 US Census long-form, 259,750 people spoke "Cantonese", with 58.62% percent residing in California and the next most with 16.19% in New York.
Chinese language and varieties in the United States | Introduction
Cenxi situates close to the westernmost edge of Cantonese-speaking area, and the great majority of local population speak a vernacular that is classified under the Goulou dialect (勾漏片), a Cantonese variety that is moderately related to standard Cantonese (i.e. Guangzhou dialect) in terms of vocabulary, grammar and phonetics, and remains largely mutually intelligible with most of the Cantonese varieties. Unlike other Cantonese-speaking major cities (e.g. Guangzhou and Nanning), Cenxi dialect continues to be the mother tongue of the majority of local residents and widely spoken on a daily basis, thanks to its low immigration and relatively isolated geography. Mandarin is the medium of instruction at schools, but only used when communicating with non-Cantonese aliens.
Cenxi | Language
However, phonetically these are a conflation of tone and final consonant; the number of phonemic tones is six in Hong Kong and seven in Guangzhou. For purposes of meters in Chinese poetry, the first and fourth tones are the "flat/level tones" (), while the rest are the "oblique tones" (). This follows their regular evolution from the four tones of Middle Chinese. The first tone can be either high level or high falling usually without affecting the meaning of the words being spoken. Most speakers are in general not consciously aware of when they use and when to use high level and high falling.
Cantonese phonology | Tones
Cantonese is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) and its surrounding area in southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety and standard form of Yue Chinese, one of the major subgroups of Chinese. Mandarin Chinese as their first language, accounting for 71% of the country's population.
Ethnic issues in China | Language issues in China
Cantonese flourishes in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as in Hong Kong and Macau where it is listed as one of their official languages. Some Cantonese speakers are native to Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom. Hong Kong owns the largest written Cantonese assets and does not have tight internet censorship. Fittingly, most editors are Hong Kongers. Starting from a small community, Cantonese Wikipedians have formed a consensus to follow, by default, the policies, guidelines, and customs of the English Wikipedia, wherever they are applicable. This consensus has provided stability and allows Wikipedians to concentrate on content.
Cantonese Wikipedia | Community
Cantonese has historically served as a "lingua franca" among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, who speak a variety of other forms of Chinese including Hokkien, Teochew, and Hakka. Additionally, Cantonese media and popular culture from Hong Kong is popular throughout the region.
Cantonese | Southeast Asia
Cantonese and Mandarin are the most popular forms of Chinese spoken in the area.
Language and overseas Chinese communities | North America
Many overseas Chinese populations in North America speak some variety of Chinese. In the United States and Canada, Chinese is the third most spoken language. Yue dialects have historically been the most prevalent forms of Chinese due to immigrants being mostly from southern China from the 19th century up through the 1980s. However, Mandarin is becoming increasingly more prevalent due to the opening up of the PRC. In New York City in 2002, Mandarin was spoken as a native language by only 10% of Chinese speakers, but was used as an auxiliary language among the greatest number of them and was predicted to replace Cantonese as their lingua franca.
Language and overseas Chinese communities | North America
A dialect from the Samyap branch of the Cantonese language is being used by the city natives. Besides that, Mandarin is also used, mainly in business and education, although the city natives don't use much of it in their daily lives.
Foshan | Language
Cantonese, a major variety of the Chinese language originating in Guangzhou, is the lingua franca in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, and is one of the official languages of Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese has the most well-developed written form of all Chinese varieties apart from the standard-Mandarin variety and Classical Chinese. With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking areas of the world cater to their population using these written Cantonese characters.
Cantonese Wikipedia | History
The actual number of Cantonese speakers was probably higher. In the 1982-83 school year, 29,908 students in California were reported to be using Cantonese as their primary home language. Approximately 16,000 of these students were identified as limited English proficient (LEP). According to data reported on the 2000 US Census long-form, 84,590 people spoke "Taiwanese Hokkien". The county with the most Hokkien speakers was Los Angeles County with 21,990 (0.250% of County population) followed by Orange County with 5,855 (0.222% of County population). The county with the highest percentage of Hokkien speakers was Calhoun County, Texas at 0.845% (160) followed by Fort Bend County, Texas at 0.286% (935) and Los Angeles County, California.
Chinese language and varieties in the United States | Introduction
Headline population density of about 6,800 people/km does not reflect true densities since only 6.9% of land is residential, the residential average population density calculates closer to a highly cramped 100,000/km. The predominant language is Cantonese, a variety of Chinese originating in Guangdong. It is spoken by 94.6 per cent of the population, 88.9 per cent as a first language and 5.7 per cent as a second language. Slightly over half the population (53.2 per cent) speaks English, the other official language; 4.3 per cent are native speakers, and 48.9 per cent speak English as a second language. Code-switching, mixing English and Cantonese in informal conversation, is common among the bilingual population.
Hong Kong | Demographics
The term "Cantonese language" is sometimes used to refer to the broader group of Yue Chinese languages and dialects spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi, although it is used more specifically to describe "Gwóngjāu wah" (), the prestige variant of Cantonese spoken in the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton). "Gwóngjāu wah" is the main language used for education, literature and media in Hong Kong and Macau. It is still widely used in Guangzhou, despite the fact that a large proportion of the city's population is made up by migrant workers from elsewhere in China that speak non-Cantonese variants of Chinese and Standard Mandarin.
Cantonese people | Language
As a result of immigration into Hong Kong from Canton Province, Cantonese is the dominant Chinese variant spoken in the territory with smaller numbers of speakers of other dialects. There are also numerous Chinese languages spoken by the native peoples of the New Territories, many of which are mutually unintelligible. There is also a written language based on the vocabulary and grammar of spoken Cantonese known as written Cantonese. Although the "biliterate and trilingual" policy implies an absence of support for written Cantonese, it has gained popularity in news media where entertainment and local news are related. Written Cantonese is unintelligible to non-Cantonese speakers and is considered nonstandard by some educators despite its widespread usage in Hong Kong.
Languages of Hong Kong | Chinese languages
Hong Kong Cantonese is the Cantonese language () spoken in Hong Kong. Although it is not one of the Hong Kong indigenous languages, it is the most widely spoken language in Hong Kong nowadays. The Hong Kong style of Cantonese contains many loanwords from English, and also some from Japanese, due to Japan being one of Hong Kong's biggest trade partners and the popularity of Japanese pop culture in the city in the past few decades. Nevertheless, Hong Kong Cantonese is still mutually intelligible with the Cantonese spoken by Cantonese people from mainland China or overseas Chinese of Cantonese ancestry.
Culture of Hong Kong | Hong Kong Cantonese
Siyi (Seiyap or Sze Yup in Cantonese; meaning "Four Hamlets") is a coastal branch of Yue Chinese spoken mainly in Guangdong province, but is also used in overseas Chinese communities. Within the province, it is mainly spoken in the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen, but pockets exist outside Jiangmen, including the Doumen and Jinwan districts in Zhuhai, Guzhen in Zhongshan and Jun'an in Foshan. Taishanese, which was one of the most important Chinese dialects in Chinese American communities, is considered a representative dialect.
Siyi Yue | Introduction
Over a period of 150 years, Guangdong has been the place-of-origin for most Chinese emigrants to Western nations; one coastal county, Taishan (or Tóisàn, where the Sìyì or "sei yap" variety of Yue is spoken), alone may be the origin of the vast majority of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. before 1965. As a result, Yue languages such as Cantonese and the closely related variety of Taishanese have been the major Chinese varieties traditionally spoken in the United States. The Zhongshan variant of Cantonese, with origins in the western Pearl River Delta, is spoken by many Chinese immigrants in Hawaii, and some in San Francisco and the Sacramento River Delta (see Locke, California); it is a Yuehai variety much like Guangzhou Cantonese, but has "flatter" tones.
Cantonese | United States
There are Cantonese-speaking communities in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and to a lesser extent, in Indonesia. Many Cantonese emigrants, particularly Taishanese peoples, also migrated to United States and Canada, and later in Australia and New Zealand as well. As a result, Cantonese continues to be widely used by Chinese communities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong/Macau origin in the Western World and has not been completely supplanted by Mandarin. Min speakers are scattered throughout southern China but mostly concentrated on province of Fujian, Taiwan and Hainan, with some parts in Guangdong (especially in Chaoshan and the tip of southern Zhejiang).
Han Chinese subgroups | Yue-speaking groups
The other two largest groups include Hokkien and Hainanese. Cantonese formed the largest group from the 17th to the mid-20th century, but form only a minority today and are concentrated in major urban centers, especially in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Nevertheless, Cantonese continues to serve as the common community language among most Chinese Cambodians. In Chinese-language schools, either Cantonese and Mandarin are taught, depending on which school.
Language and overseas Chinese communities | Cambodia
As a result, Cantonese is widely understood and spoken with varying fluency by Chinese throughout Malaysia, regardless of their dialect group. This is in spite of Hokkien being the most widely spoken variety and Mandarin being the medium of education at Chinese-language schools. The widespread influence of Cantonese is also due in large part to the popularity of Hong Kong media, particularly TVB dramas.
Malaysian Cantonese | Geographic spread
Many languages are spoken in Mong Cai. Everyone speaks Vietnamese as the native language. Cantonese is widely spoken in the Center Market and English is becoming the second language of the younger generation. Mandarin Chinese is also spoken here, especially in commercial areas. As of 2003 the district had a population of 72,960. The district covers an area of 515 km².
Móng Cái | Language
Among the Chinese community in France, Cantonese is spoken by immigrants who fled the former French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) following the conflicts and communist takeovers in the region during the 1970s. While a slight majority of ethnic Chinese from Indochina speak Teochew at home, knowledge of Cantonese is prevalent due to its historic prestige status in the region and is used for commercial and community purposes between the different Chinese variety groups. As in the United States, there is a divide between Cantonese-speakers and those speaking other mainland Chinese varieties.
Cantonese | France
As many Sze Yap in Hong Kong who are either second, third or fourth generation Hong Kongers, Taishanese people speak Cantonese as their usual language and some may not know their ancestral origin. Therefore, that makes it hard to know the exact population, but based on the 1960s Hong Kong Census, it is probably right now about over 30% – 40%.
Taishanese people in Hong Kong | Hong Kong immigration
Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese language of the Chinese Australian community since the first ethnic Chinese settlers arrived in the 1850s. It maintained this status until the mid-2000s, when a heavy increase in immigration from Mandarin-speakers largely from Mainland China led to Mandarin surpassing Cantonese as the dominant Chinese dialect spoken. Cantonese is the third most-spoken language in Australia. In the 2011 census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics listed 336,410 and 263,673 speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese, respectively.
Cantonese | Australia
Before the arrival of British settlers in 1842, the inhabitants of Hong Kong mainly spoke the Dongguan-Bao'an (Tungkun–Po'on) and Tanka dialects of Yue, as well as Hakka and Teochew. These languages and dialects are all remarkably different from Guangzhou Cantonese. After the British acquired Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories from the Qing in 1841 (officially 1842) and 1898, large numbers of merchants and workers came to Hong Kong from the city of Canton, the main centre of Cantonese. Cantonese became the dominant spoken language in Hong Kong. The extensive migration from mainland Cantonese-speaking areas to Hong Kong continued up until 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China.
Hong Kong Cantonese | History
Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China. Due to the city's long standing as an important cultural center, Cantonese emerged as the prestige dialect of the Yue varieties of Chinese in the Southern Song dynasty and its usage spread around most of what is now the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Despite the cession of Macau to Portugal in 1557 and Hong Kong to Britain in 1842, the ethnic Chinese population of the two territories largely originated from the 19th and 20th century immigration from Guangzhou and surrounding areas, making Cantonese the predominant Chinese language in the territories.
Cantonese | Mainland China
According to the 2011 Population Census the population of the City One census area was 24,758 people. Approximately 44.2% of the population were male, 93.8% were ethnic Chinese, over 93.6% of residents spoke primarily Cantonese. Although English was the second primary language, only 2.9% spoke it as their first language. The drastic change of demographics and social norms in Hong Kong due to the influx of China immigrants under the post-transfer-of-sovereignty policy of assimilation to draw in more Mandarin speaking migrants had been reflected in the population census of City One. International students from China and China immigrants made up mostly of the 2.2% who speak Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese making it the third largest language group in the estate, just 0.7% behind English, which is an official language in Hong Kong.
City One | Demographics
The standard pronunciation of Cantonese is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is related to the Guangzhou dialect, and the two diverge only slightly. Yue dialects in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, such as Taishanese, may be considered divergent to a greater degree.
Cantonese phonology | Introduction
Cantonese: Catalan: Chinese, Mandarin:
List of official languages | C
Today, Hong Kong and Macau are the only regions in the world where Cantonese is the official spoken language, with the mixed influences of English and Portuguese respectively. Cantonese remains today as a majority language in Guangdong and Guangxi, despite the increasing influence of Mandarin. Taishanese people may also be considered Cantonese but speak a distinct variety of Yue Chinese, Taishanese. There have been a number of influential Cantonese figures throughout history, such as Yuan Chonghuan, Bruce Lee, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-Sen, Lee Shau-kee, Ho Ching and Flossie Wong-Staal.
Cantonese people | Introduction
With regards to additional spoken languages other than their usual language, 52.0% stated that they spoke English, 30.7% Cantonese, and 7.0% Mandarin. (Multiple responses were permitted to the latter question, hence the responses are non-exclusive.) 10.8% did not speak English as either their usual language nor an additional language, while the respective figures for Cantonese and Mandarin were 64.7% and 93.0%.
South Asians in Hong Kong | Languages
Literate Chinese speakers can read and write in the Mandarin-based standard written language. However, because the graphemes in Chinese's logographic writing system are not directly linked to pronunciation (though there are quasi-phonetic hints), Cantonese speakers who do not speak Mandarin will read aloud the characters in Cantonese pronunciation only. The resulting speech is Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary pronounced word-by-word in Cantonese. If the same sentence were to be spoken using regular colloquial Cantonese, it might be quite different. Here is an example:
List of diglossic regions | Modern Chinese
Cantonese is a language within the Chinese language family originating from the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) and its surrounding area in Southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group, which has over 80 million native speakers. While the term "Cantonese" specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible languages and dialects such as Taishanese. Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of Southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas communities.
Cantonese | Introduction
Spoken Chinese has numerous regional and local varieties, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Most of these are rare outside their native areas, though they may be spoken outside of China. Many varieties also have Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters for newer standard reading sounds. Since a 1909 Qing dynasty decree, China has promoted Mandarin for use in education, the media, and official communications. The proclamation of Mandarin as the official national language, however, was not fully accepted by the Cantonese authorities in the early 20th century, who argued for the "regional uniqueness" of their own local language and commercial importance of the region.
Cantonese | Cultural role
The Japanese is the shinjitai of the hanzi (Jyutping: "jik6";). However, 驛 has fallen out of usage to in modern Cantonese and become obsolete. Therefore, it is not uncommon to mispronounce as its phonetic compound (Jyutping: cek3;)).
Languages of Hong Kong | Japanese
The nine Cantonese tones are made up of the four musical notes numbered 2, 4, 5, 6 (re, fa, so, la) in the musical scale. If one takes note 2 (re) as the tonic, then notes 4 (fa), 5 (s) and 6 (la) are respectively the minor third, perfect fourth and perfect fifth of 2 (re). From the above 4 notes, one obtains the 9 Cantonese tones through the pitch modulations detailed in the table below. The first five Cantonese tones approximate to the five tones of Mandarin. The tones 1 to 9 in Common Phonetic Spelling correspond to the tones 7, 2, 4, 1, 8, 9, 5, 3, and 6 in traditional Cantonese numbering.
Common Phonetic Spelling | Tone Numbers
Cantonese is spoken by ethnic Chinese in Portugal who originate from Macau, the most established Chinese community in the nation with a presence dating back to the 16th century and Portuguese colonialism. Since the late-20th century, however, Mandarin- and Wu-speaking migrants from mainland China have outnumbered those from Macau, although Cantonese is still retained among mainstream Chinese community associations.
Cantonese | Portugal
Most of Guangzhou's population is Han Chinese. Almost all of the local Cantonese people speak Cantonese as their first language, while most migrants speak forms of Mandarin. In 2010, each language was the native tongue of roughly half of the city's population, although minor but substantial numbers speak other varieties as well. In 2018, He Huifeng of the "South China Morning Post" stated that younger residents have increasingly favored using Mandarin instead of Cantonese in their daily lives, causing their Cantonese-speaking grandparents and parents to use Mandarin to communicate with them. He Huifeng stated that factors included local authorities discouraging the use of Cantonese in schools and the rise in prestige of Mandarin-speaking Shenzhen.
Guangzhou | Ethnicity and language
In Southeast Asia, Cantonese people may adopt local Malay words into their daily speech, such as using the term 鐳 rather than saying 錢 which would be what the Hong Kong Cantonese would say, meaning money and written 錢.
Written Cantonese | Native words
Also, academically called "Canton prefecture speech" ().
Cantonese | Names
Mandarin Chinese has four tones (), namely the first tone (flat or high level tone, 阴平, denoted by " ¯ " in Pinyin), the second tone (rising or high-rising tone, 阳平, denoted by " ˊ " in Pinyin), the third tone (falling-rising or low tone, 上声, denoted by " ˇ " in Pinyin), and the fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone, 去声, denoted by " ˋ " in Pinyin). There is also a fifth tone called neutral (轻声, denoted as no-mark in Pinyin) although the official name of the tones is Four Tones. Many other Chinese dialects have more, for example, Cantonese has six (often numbered as nine, but three are duplicates).
Chinese as a foreign language | Tones
As special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau list the ambiguous "Chinese" as their official language, although in practice, the regionally spoken Cantonese dialect is used by the government as the official variant of Chinese rather than Mandarin as on the mainland. Cantonese is also highly influential in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where the language originated. Despite Mandarin's status as the official language of China, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has allowed local television and other media in Guangdong Province to be broadcast in Cantonese since 1988 in order to countermeasure against Hong Kong influence.
List of territorial entities where Chinese is an official language | Cantonese
All tones are omitted as are distinctions between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The distinctions between the long vowel and the short vowel are omitted like Fat (, ; meaning "to issue") and Fat (, ; meaning "Buddha"). Some of the inconsistencies are due to a distinction that has been lost historically (a distinction between palatal and alveolar sounds, viz. "ch" versus "ts", "sh" versus "s", and "j" versus "z"). These consonants are no longer distinguished in present-day speech. The following table of geographical names illustrates the standard.
Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation | Spelling
Although Hokkien is the most spoken variety of Chinese, and Mandarin is the medium of education at Chinese-language schools, Cantonese is largely influential in the local Chinese-language media and is used in commerce by Chinese Malaysians. Due to the popularity of Hong Kong popular culture, especially through drama series and popular music, Cantonese is widely understood by the Chinese in all parts of Malaysia, even though a large proportion of the Chinese Malaysian population is non-Cantonese. Television networks in Malaysia regularly broadcast Hong Kong television programmes in their original Cantonese audio and soundtrack. Cantonese radio is also available in the nation and Cantonese is prevalent in locally produced Chinese television.
Cantonese | Malaysia
Written Cantonese is very common in manhua, books, articles, magazines, newspapers, online chat, instant messaging, internet blogs and social networking websites. Anime, cartoons and foreign films are also dubbed in Cantonese. Some videogames such as Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 4, Grand Theft Auto III and Resident Evil 6 have substantial Cantonese dialogues.
Cantonese people | Language
Cantonese is widely spoken amongst Malaysian Chinese in the capital Kuala Lumpur and throughout much of the surrounding Klang Valley (Petaling Jaya, Ampang, Cheras, Selayang, Sungai Buloh, Puchong, Shah Alam, Kajang, Bangi and Subang Jaya) excluding Klang itself where Hokkien predominates. It is also widely spoken in the town of Sekinchan in the Sabak Bernam district of northern Selangor. It is also used or widely spoken in northeast and central areas as well as parts of southern Perak, especially in the state capital Ipoh and the surrounding towns of the Kinta Valley region (Gopeng, Batu Gajah and Kampar) as well as the towns of Tapah and Bidor in the Batang Padang district of southern Perak and to a lesser extent in the districts of Kuala Kangsar, Perak Tengah, Hilir Perak, Bagan Datoh, Muallim and Hulu Perak (Cantonese of Kwongsai origins).
Malaysian Cantonese | Geographic spread
Hong Kong people used to speak Cantonese with some English's vocabularies, which becomes a new practice of Hong Kong's spoken language.
Culture of Hong Kong | Spoken languages
Most of the Chinese resided in big cities and towns around east coast of Sumatra, north coast of Java and west coast of Kalimantan. The distribution of Chinese varieties are scattered throughout the archipelago. On North Sumatra, Riau, Riau Islands and Jambi, two varieties of Hokkien exist, Medan Hokkien and Riau Hokkien, which incorporate local and Indonesian vocabulary. Hakka is concentrated in Bangka-Belitung, South Sumatra, Jakarta and West Kalimantan where they form a significant part of the local population. Meanwhile, Pontianak to Ketapang, Kendawangan on the southern tip of West Kalimantan is populated by Teochew speakers. Cantonese and, more recently, Mandarin have been used in Chinese-language schools and both variants are found in major cities such as Jakarta, Medan, Batam and Surabaya, with Mandarin usage increasing with recent arrivals from China (especially in the north) and Taiwan, as well as Cantonese speakers originating from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau.
Language and overseas Chinese communities | Indonesia
At the current time, language shift is occurring all across China. Many languages of minority ethnic groups are declining, as well as the many regional varieties of Chinese. Generally the shift is in favour of Standard Chinese (Mandarin), but in the province of Guangdong the cultural influence of Cantonese has meant local dialects and languages are being abandoned for Cantonese instead. In Hong Kong, Cantonese became the dominant language spoken in society since widespread immigration to Hong Kong began from the 1940s onward. With immigrants of differing mother tongues, communication was hard without a dominant language. With Cantonese originating from the capital of neighboring Canton province, Cantonese became the dominant language by extension, and other similar dialects started to vanish from use in Hong Kong.
Language shift | China
The principal language of Hong Kong is standard Cantonese (粵語, 廣州話, 廣東話, 廣府話, 白話, 本地話), spoken by 88.9% of the population at home daily. As an official language, it is used in education, broadcasting, government administration, legislation and judiciary, as well as for daily communication. As a result of its predominance throughout the community, Cantonese is virtually the exclusive language of official discourse at all levels of the executive, legislature and courts of Hong Kong.
Languages of Hong Kong | Cantonese
The Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of "Yuehai", usually called "Cantonese", is the prestige dialect of Guangdong province and social standard of Yue. It is the most widely spoken dialect of Yue and is an official language of Hong Kong and of Macau, alongside English and Portuguese respectively. It is the "lingua franca" of not only Guangdong province but also of overseas Cantonese emigrants, though in many areas abroad it is numerically second to the Taishanese dialect of Yue. By law, Mandarin ("Putonghua" or "guoyu") is the standard language of mainland China and Taiwan and is taught nearly universally as a supplement to local languages such as Cantonese in Guangdong and Guangxi.
Yue Chinese | Cantonese
The official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has many different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the "de facto" official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and tribunals. It is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation also exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language alongside Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in everyday life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government.
Cantonese | Hong Kong and Macau
Shanghainese is commonly spoken by migrants who escaped Shanghai after the communist takeover of China in 1949. Their descendants seldom speak the language nowadays.
Languages of Hong Kong | Shanghainese
The popularity of Cantonese-language media, Cantopop and the Cinema of Hong Kong has since led to substantial exposure of Cantonese to China and the rest of Asia. On the Mainland, the national policy is to promote Standard Chinese, which is also the medium of instruction in schools. The place of local Cantonese language and culture remains contentious. In 2010, a controversial proposal to switch some programming on Guangzhou local television from Cantonese to Mandarin was abandoned following widespread backlash accompanied by public protests.
Yue Chinese | Rise of Cantonese
In English, the term "Cantonese" can be ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton, which is the traditional English name of Guangzhou. This narrow sense may be specified as "Canton language" or "Guangzhou language". However, "Cantonese" may also refer to the primary branch of Chinese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang; this broader usage may be specified as "Yue speech" (). In this article, "Cantonese" is used for Cantonese proper. Historically, speakers called this variety "Canton speech" or "Guangzhou speech" (), although this term is now seldom used outside Guangzhou. In Guangdong and Guangxi, people also call it "provincial capital speech" () or "plain speech" ().
Cantonese | Names
The languages most commonly spoken are Yunfu variant of Cantonese, Min and the Hakka dialect.
Yun'an District | Language
The third system in general use in Hong Kong after Lau and Yale is the Hong Kong Government or "Standard Romanisation" system developed by James D Ball and Ernst J Eitel, and upon which Lau's was largely based. Lau's "A Practical Cantonese-English Dictionary", with 22,000 Cantonese entries, was published by the Hong Kong government in 1977, and reviewed favorably by Dew in the "Journal of Chinese Linguistics".
Sidney Lau | Texts
Cantonese is the most common Chinese variety spoken among Chinese Canadians. According to the Canada 2016 Census, there were 565,275 Canadian residents who reported Cantonese as their native language. As in the United States, the Chinese Canadian community traces its roots to early immigrants from Guangdong during the latter half of the 19th century. Later Chinese immigrants came from Hong Kong in two waves, first in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, and again in the 1980s to late 1990s on fears arising from the impending handover to the People's Republic of China. Chinese-speaking immigrants from conflict zones in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, arrived as well, beginning in the mid-1970s and were also largely Cantonese-speaking.
Cantonese | Canada
After English and Spanish, Hmong is the third most commonly spoken language in the Central Valley.
Central Valley (California) | Ethnography
The Guangzhou dialect (Cantonese) was used in the popular "Yuèōu", "Mùyú" and "Nányīn" folksong genres, as well as Cantonese opera. There was also a small amount of vernacular literature, written with Chinese characters extended with a number of non-traditional characters for Cantonese words. Guangzhou became the centre of rapidly expanding foreign trade after the maritime ban was lifted, with the British East India Company establishing a chamber of commerce in the city in 1715. The ancestors of most of the Han Chinese population of Hong Kong came from Guangzhou after the territory was ceded to Britain in 1842. As a result, Hong Kong Cantonese, the most widely spoken language in Hong Kong and Macau, is an offshoot of the Guangzhou dialect.
Yue Chinese | Rise of Cantonese
The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is mutually intelligible with the Cantonese spoken in the mainland city of Guangzhou, although there exist some minor differences in accent, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
Cantonese | Hong Kong and Macau
The actor may choose to speak any dialect of Mandarin, but the ancient Zhōngzhōu () variant is mainly used in Cantonese opera. Zhōngzhōu is located in the modern-day Henan province where it is considered the "cradle of Chinese civilization" and near the Yellow River. retains many of the initial sounds of many modern Mandarin dialects, but uses initials and codas from Middle Chinese. For example, the words and are both pronounced as /tsœːŋ˥˥/ () in Modern Cantonese, but will respectively be spoken as /tʂɑŋ˥˥/ () and /tɕiɑŋ˥˥/ () in operatic . Furthermore, the word is pronounced as /kɐm˥˥/ () in modern Cantonese and /tɕin˥˥/ () in standard Mandarin, but operatic Guān Huà will use /kim˥˥/ ().
Cantonese opera | Speech types
Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language of the Sino-Tibetan family. It is the official and native language of Hong Kong, China. A similar dialect is also spoken in Macau, China. Although Hong Kongers refer to the language as ""Cantonese"" (), publications in mainland China describe the variant as "Hong Kong dialect" (), due to the differences between the pronunciation used in Hong Kong Cantonese and that of the Cantonese spoken in neighbouring Guangdong Province where Cantonese (based on the Guangzhou dialect) is a "lingua franca". Over the years, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed foreign terminology and developed a large set of Hong Kong-specific terms.
Hong Kong Cantonese | Introduction
The overwhelming majority of Chinese speakers in the United Kingdom use Cantonese, with about 300,000 British people claiming it as their first language. This is largely due to the presence of British Hong Kongers and the fact that many British Chinese also have origins in the former British colonies in Southeast Asia of Singapore and Malaysia.
Cantonese | United Kingdom
In Guangzhou, many distinctively Yue vocabulary items have been replaced with Cantonese pronunciations of corresponding "Putonghua" terms. Cantonese is the "de facto" official language of Hong Kong (along with English) and Macau (along with Portuguese), though legally the official language is just "Chinese". It is the oral language of instruction in Chinese schools in Hong Kong and Macau, and is used extensively in Cantonese-speaking households. Cantonese-language media (Hong Kong films, television serials, and Cantopop), isolation from the other regions of China, local identity, and the non-Mandarin speaking Cantonese diaspora in Hong Kong and abroad give the language a unique identity.
Yue Chinese | Cantonese
By 2012 Mandarin was displacing Cantonese in Greater Vancouver. Cantonese and Mandarin are commonly spoken in Richmond.
Chinese Canadians in British Columbia | Language
Cantonese is a member of the group of Chinese varieties. Different Wikipedias have been established for different Chinese varieties (see below). The Cantonese Wikipedia is the third largest in this family.
Cantonese Wikipedia | Other Chinese-language Wikipedias
Most residents are linguistically Teochew. Teochew dialect is a variant of Min Nan (Hokkien-Taiwanese) spoken in the neighbouring Southern Fujian and Taiwan. There are also Hakka, popularly known as Half-Hakka (), living mainly in Chaoyang District and Chaonan District, although they speak Teochew on a daily basis and practise Teochew culture. The Mandarin-medium education system, widely promoted throughout China, has made most people, especially younger generations, speak Mandarin fluently. Cantonese language TV and labor migrations to the Pearl River Delta has also made Cantonese widely spoken as a third language by the younger generations. Governmental statistics show that 2.16 million overseas Chinese have roots in Shantou, with significant populations of Teochew people residing in Thailand and Cambodia, which constitute a majority of Thai Chinese and a majority of Chinese Cambodians.
Shantou | Languages
As of 2014, Vietnamese is the third most commonly spoken language, Chinese is the fourth most commonly spoken language, and Hindi is the fifth most commonly spoken language in the state. Tagalog is sixth place, and is mostly spoken in small Filipino American communities in Houston.
Languages of Texas | Asian languages
Officially English and Chinese are the two official language of Hong Kong. The definition of Chinese is somehow ambiguous as Chinese itself consists of a number of mutually unintelligible varieties. Cantonese is the major spoken language in Hong Kong and written in various form with Traditional Chinese characters. English is a variant of British English, though American English is also commonly used in Hong Kong. From 19th century, censuses have investigated what languages the people of Hong Kong speak. Hakka, Hoklo, and Tanka have lost importance over time. Cantonese has come to be spoken by the vast majority, though there are increasingly more Mandarin-speaking people, particularly since the turn of the millennium.
Languages in censuses | Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, most speakers have merged the high level and high falling tones. In Guangzhou, the high falling tone is disappearing as well, but is still prevalent among certain words, e.g. in traditional Yale Romanization with diacritics, "sàam" (high falling) means the number three , whereas "sāam" (high level) means shirt .
Cantonese phonology | Tones
Mandarin is the official language of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan); one of the official languages of Singapore as well as one of six official languages of the United Nations. Chinese is the official language of Hong Kong and Macau, where Cantonese is spoken locally. Sizeable Overseas Chinese communities exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Mauritius, Brazil, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela, although the variant(s) of Chinese used usually differs. The "Ethnologue" (Lewis 2013) estimated the total number of Sinophones at 1,197 million in 33 countries. The numbers of speakers (in millions) for the most common varieties are: Guan 848, Wu 77.2, Yue 62.2, Min Nan 46.8, Jin 45.0, Xiang 36.0, Hakka 30.1, Gan 20.6, Min Bei 10.3, Min Dong 9.1, Huizhou 4.6, Min Zhong 3.1 and Pu-Xian Min 2.6 (million).
Sinophone | Demographics
Meanwhile, usage of the country’s other dialects in media is rigorously restricted by the SARFT, with permission from national or local authorities being required for a dialect to be the primary programming language at radio and television stations. Despite its unique standing relative to other Chinese dialects, Cantonese has also recently been targeted by the SARFT in attempts to curb its usage on local television in Guangdong. This created mass demonstrations in 2010 that resulted in the eventual rejection of the plans.
List of territorial entities where Chinese is an official language | Cantonese
With the founding of the Republic of China, Standard Mandarin was designated as the official language, based on the spoken language of Beijing. Since then, other spoken varieties are regarded as "fangyan" (regional speech). Cantonese is still the most commonly-used language in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and among some overseas Chinese communities, whereas Hokkien has been accepted in Taiwan as an important local language alongside Mandarin.
Dialect | Greater China
The Roman letters in Common Phonetic Spelling are transcribed directly from bopomofo so that there is no variation in the sound of each letter (except for the letter 'i' which is used both for the 'i' vowel and 'y' consonant sounds). Hence, the 26 letters of the alphabet represent the approximate same sound in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Additionally, the same tone numbers (1 to 5 for Mandarin, and 1 to 9 for Cantonese) are used to represent the approximate same pitch modulations in both dialects.
Common Phonetic Spelling | Introduction
A few closely related dialects to standard Cantonese continue to be spoken in Hong Kong. Most notable is the Weitou dialect (圍頭話), which is mostly spoken by the older generation living in walled villages in New Territories. Additionally, the Tanka people (蜑家人/疍家人/水上人) from the fishing villages on outlying islands speak their own variant of Cantonese. However, this dialect is now largely limited to those middle aged and above.
Languages of Hong Kong | Native Yue dialects
Although the city is geographically and thus culturally Cantonese in the Weitou form and as well as culturally Hakka in the prefectures of Fenggang and Qingxi, the majority of the modern-day population speaks Mandarin due to the large influx of economic migrants from other parts of China. The city is home to several universities, including Guangdong University of Science and Technology, Guangdong Medical University and Dongguan University of Technology.
Dongguan | Introduction
Despite the more recently emerged large Fuzhou population, many of the Chinese businesses in Chinatown are still Cantonese owned. The Cantonese dominated western section of Chinatown also continues to be the main busy Chinese business district. As a result, it has influenced many Fuzhouese to learn Cantonese for businesses, especially large businesses like the Dim Sum restaurants on what is known as Little Fuzhou on East Broadway (小福州). The Fuzhouese, the subgroup of non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese with the most interactions with Cantonese, also constitute the majority of non-native Cantonese-speaking Chinese. Many of the Fuzhou immigrants in the 1980s and early 1990s learned to speak Cantonese to maintain jobs and communicate with the Cantonese-speaking population.
Chinatown, Manhattan | Chinese cultural standards
Younger generations of the Cantonese communities now speak the more standard version. Today, some aboriginals of the Cantonese and Hakka speaking communities disperse into urban settlements (e.g. apartments and villas), but most of them are still clustering in their traditional urban and suburban villages. The influx of migrants from other parts of the country has drastically altered the city's linguistic landscape, as Shenzhen has undergone a language shift towards Mandarin, which was both promoted by the Chinese Central Government as a national lingua franca and natively spoken by most of the out-of-province immigrants and their descendants. However, in recent years multilingualism is on the rise as descendants of immigrants of out-of-province Mandarin native speakers begin to assimilate into the local culture through friends, television and other media.
Shenzhen | Languages and religions
There are many other Chinese languages spoken by the Han Chinese in these areas. In Guangxi, Southwestern Mandarin is spoken as are other Yue Chinese languages apart from Cantonese. In Guangdong, aside from other Yue Chinese languages, these non-Cantonese languages include Hakka, Chaoshan, Leizhou Min, and Tuhua. Non-Cantonese speaking Yue peoples are sometimes labelled as "Cantonese" such as the Taishanese people (), even though Taishanese () has low intelligibility to Standard Cantonese. The Taishanese see themselves as people of Guangdong, but not Cantonese. Some literature uses neutral terminology such as Guangdongese and Guangxiese to refer to people from these provinces without the cultural or linguistic affiliations to Cantonese.
Cantonese people | Terminology
Cantonese romanization systems are based on the accent of Canton and Hong Kong, and have helped define the concept of Standard Cantonese. The major systems are: Jyutping, Yale, the Chinese government's Guangdong Romanization, and Meyer–Wempe. While they do not differ greatly, Jyutping and Yale are the two most used and taught systems today in the West. Additionally, Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course and is still in use today. While the governments of Hong Kong and Macau utilize a romanization system for proper names and geographic locations, they are inconsistent in the transcription of some sounds and the systems are not taught in schools.
Cantonese | Romanization
Spanish (including Spanish Creole) is the second most spoken language in Maryland, after English. The third and fourth most spoken languages are French (including Patois and Cajun) and Chinese. Other commonly spoken languages include various African languages, Korean, German, Tagalog, Russian, Vietnamese, Italian, various Asian languages, Persian, Hindi and other Indic languages, Greek and Arabic.
Maryland | Language
In Malaysia, Cantonese is widely spoken amongst the Malaysian Chinese community in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding areas in the Klang Valley (Petaling Jaya, Ampang, Cheras, Selayang, Sungai Buloh, Puchong, Shah Alam, Kajang, Bangi, and Subang Jaya). The dialect is also widely spoken as well in the town of Sekinchan in the district of Sabak Bernam located in the northern part of Selangor state and also in the state of Perak, especially in the state capital city of Ipoh and its surrounding towns of Gopeng, Batu Gajah, and Kampar of the Kinta Valley region plus the towns of Tapah and Bidor in the southern part of the Perak state, and also widely spoken in the eastern Sabahan town of Sandakan as well as the towns of Kuantan, Raub, Bentong, and Mentakab in Pahang state, and they are also found in other areas such as Sarikei, Sarawak, and Mersing, Johor.
Cantonese | Malaysia
The South Asians of Hong Kong are usually multilingual, with many attaining trilingual fluency or more. Most are fluent in both English and a mother tongue (such as Sindhi, Gujarati or Punjabi), and many are fluent in Hindi, and/or Urdu as well. In addition, some may also study Sanskrit, Arabic or (for the Parsis) Avestan for religious reasons. The command of Cantonese is more variable; one 2006 survey of South Asian parents with children attending school in Hong Kong showed that more than 80% were illiterate in Chinese, while 60% could not speak Cantonese at all. Among respondents to the 2011 Census who self-identified as Indian, 37.2% stated that they spoke English as their usual language, 4.6% Cantonese, and 57.9% some other language.
South Asians in Hong Kong | Languages
The Basic Law of Hong Kong states that English and Chinese are the two official languages of Hong Kong. During the British colonial era, English was the sole official language until 1978 but has remained a strong second language in Hong Kong. As the majority of the population in Hong Kong are descendants of migrants from China's Canton Province, the vast majority speak standard Cantonese or other Yue Chinese varieties as a first language, with smaller numbers of speakers of Hakka Language or the Teochew dialect of Southern Min. In addition, immigrants and expatriates from the West and other Asian countries have contributed much to Hong Kong's linguistic and demographic diversity.
Languages of Hong Kong | Introduction
In the movie a four languages are spoken: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and English. Even though much of the film is centered around Hong Kong, the main characters speak Mandarin-Chinese among each other, e.g. Hins, his mother, his girlfriend and Ming. The other languages are spoken in much shorter segments. This multitude of languages is also reflected in the transcription of the Chinese characters of the title () given by the producer which is Cantonese and reads "tung lau hap woo", whereas one would expect a transcription in Mandarin pinyin for such a mostly Mandarin spoken movie which would be "tóng liú hé wū".
Utopians (film) | Languages
There exist many more pronouns in Classical Chinese and in literary works, including (jyu5) or (ji5) for "you", and (ng4) for "I" (see Chinese honorifics). However, they are not used in colloquial speech. Third person singular (keoi5) Other than the personal pronouns as shown above, its two other uses are:
Cantonese pronouns | Personal pronouns
In Pahang, it is spoken in the state capital town of Kuantan and also widely found or spoken amongst the local Chinese populace in other districts such as Raub, Maran, Jerantut, Bentong, Rompin, Kuala Lipis, Bera, Pekan, Temerloh and Cameron Highlands. Cantonese is also spoken throughout most of Negeri Sembilan, particularly in the state capital Seremban. It is widely spoken in Sandakan, Sabah and Cantonese speakers can also be found in other areas such as Segamat, Johor, Keningau, Sabah, Sarikei, Sarawak, Batu Pahat, Johor, Miri, Sarawak and Mersing, Johor. Due to its predominance in the capital city, Cantonese is highly influential in local Chinese-language media and is used in commerce by Malaysian Chinese.
Malaysian Cantonese | Geographic spread
Yue or Cantonese speakers are predominant in the Pearl River basin (western-central Guangdong and eastern-central Guangxi), as well as in Hong Kong and Macau. The Yue dialects spoken in Guangxi province are mutually intelligible with Cantonese. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like that of Guangzhou than is that of Taishan which is 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it. Cantonese is also spoken by some locals in Hainan. For example, the Mai dialect which is closely related to Cantonese, is spoken in Hainan Province.
Han Chinese subgroups | Wu-speaking groups
One elementary school in Yuexiu, Guangzhou reportedly requires students to speak Mandarin not only in classes but also during their spare time, and threatens to deduct points from their records if they fail to comply. This has caused some children to become reluctant to learn and use Cantonese or unable to understand or communicate in Cantonese at times.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy | Decline of Cantonese in younger generations
There are also a large number of persons of Chinese ancestry among those born in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. Before the end of the 20th century, Chinese Australians were predominately of Cantonese and Hakka descent from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, and Cantonese was the dominant language. Due to more recent immigration from other regions of China, Mandarin has surpassed Cantonese by number of speakers. At the 2016 census, 596,711 persons declared that they spoke Mandarin at home (the most common language spoken at home in Australia after English at 2.5%), followed by Cantonese at 280,943 (the third most common after English at 1.2%).
Chinese Australians | Demographics
Prior to the establishment of Special Economic Zone, the indigenous local communities could be divided into Cantonese and Hakka speakers, which were two cultural and linguistic sub-ethnic groups vernacular to Guangdong province. Two Cantonese varieties were spoken locally. One was a fairly standard version, known as standard Cantonese. The other, spoken by several villages south of Fuhua Rd. was called Weitou dialect. Two or three Hong Kong villages south of the Shenzhen River also speak this dialect. This is consistent with the area settled by people who accompanied the Southern Song court to the south in the late 13th century.
Shenzhen | Languages and religions
Unlike other non-Mandarin Chinese varieties, Cantonese persists in a few state television and radio broadcasts today. Nevertheless, there have been recent attempts to minimize the use of Cantonese in China. The most notable has been the 2010 proposal that Guangzhou Television increase its broadcast in Mandarin at the expense of Cantonese programs. This however led to protests in Guangzhou, which eventually dissuaded authorities from going forward with the proposal. Additionally, there are reports of students being punished for speaking other Chinese languages at school, resulting in a reluctance of younger children to communicate in their native languages, including Cantonese. Such actions have further provoked Cantonese speakers to cherish their linguistic identity in contrast to migrants who have generally arrived from poorer areas of China and largely speak Mandarin or other Chinese languages.
Cantonese | Cultural role