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Cantonese
Cantonese, also known as Yue, is a primary branch of spoken Chinese. The name "Cantonese" is also commonly used in a narrower sense for the Standard Cantonese, which is the prestige dialect of Cantonese in the broader sense. The issue of whether Cantonese in the broader sense should be regarded as a language in its own right or as a dialect of a Chinese language is controversial. Like the other primary branches of Chinese, Cantonese is considered to be a dialect of a single Chinese language for ethnic and cultural reasons, but it is also considered a language in its own right because it is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese. The exact number of Cantonese speakers is unknown due to a lack of statistics and census data. The areas with the highest concentration of speakers are Guangdong, some parts of Guangxi in southern mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, with Cantonese-speaking minorities in Southeast Asia, Canada, and the United States. Cantonese is about as far from Mandarin as German is from English, but in Chinese culture, it is still regarded as a "dialect" rather than its own language. In some ways, Cantonese is a more conservative language than Mandarin, and in other ways it is not. For example, Cantonese has retained consonant endings from older varieties of Chinese that have been lost in Mandarin, but it has merged some vowels from older varieties of Chinese. Relation to Classical Chinese Since the pronunciation of all modern varieties of Chinese are different from Old Chinese or other forms of historical Chinese (such as Middle Chinese), characters that once rhymed in poetry may no longer (e.g. rhyming occurring sometimes in Min, Cantonese, and rarely in Mandarin, or vice versa). Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than the original reading must have been. However, some modern Chinese dialects have certain phonological characteristics that are closer to the older pronunciations than others, as shown by the preservation of certain rhyme structures. Some believe wenyan literature, especially poetry, sounds better when read in certain dialects believed to be closer to older pronunciations, such as Cantonese or Southern Min, or the Wenzhou dialect.  Cantonese outside China Historically, the majority of the overseas Chinese have originated from just two provinces; Fujian and Guangdong. This has resulted in the overseas Chinese having a far higher proportion of Fujian and Guangdong languages/dialect speakers than Chinese speakers in China as a whole. More recent emigration from Fujian and Hong Kong have continued this trend. The largest number of Cantonese speakers outside mainland China and Hong Kong are in south east Asia, however speakers of Min dialects are predominate among the overseas Chinese in south east Asia.[citation needed] The Cantonese spoken in Singapore and Malaysia is also known to have borrowed substantially from Malay and other languages Dictionary: Christianity in China, Cantonese coming soon! |
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