Department: Yamada Language Center
Number of Users Worldwide: 70-86 million
Offerings: LT 199 - Self-Study Program
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta.[1] While the term Cantonese specifically refers to the prestige variety, in linguistics it has often been used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but partially mutually intelligible varieties like 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. It was the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong (being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as Guangxi—until Standard Chinese, based on Mandarin Chinese, became the common language in mainland China.[2] However, Cantonese is still the dominant and co-official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Furthermore, Cantonese is widely spoken among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as in Singapore and Cambodia to a lesser extent) and the Western world.