Cantonese is the traditional
prestige variety
Prestige in sociolinguistics is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally co ...
of
Yue Chinese
Yue () is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Northern and southern China, Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang).
The term Cantonese is often used to refer ...
, a
Sinitic language belonging to the
Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
(formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area in official documents, ...
.
While the term ''Cantonese'' specifically refers to the prestige variety, in
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
it has often been used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but partially
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
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
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
, as well as in
overseas communities. In
mainland China
"Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...
, it is the ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
'' of the province of
Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
(being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as
Guangxi
Guangxi,; officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam (Hà Giang Province, Hà Giang, Cao Bằn ...
. It is also the dominant and co-official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Furthermore, Cantonese is widely spoken among
overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese people are Chinese people, people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 milli ...
in
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
(most notably in
Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
and
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, as well as in
Singapore
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
and
Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
to a lesser extent) and the Western world.
With about 80 million total speakers as of 2023, standard Cantonese is by far the most spoken variant of Yue Chinese and non-Mandarin Chinese language.
Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary with
Mandarin and other
varieties of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
, these
Sinitic languages
The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a p ...
are not
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
, largely because of phonological differences, but also due to the differences in grammar and vocabulary. Sentence structure, in particular the verb placement, sometimes differs between the two varieties. A notable difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is how the spoken word is written; both can be recorded verbatim, but very few Cantonese speakers are knowledgeable in the full Cantonese written vocabulary, so a non-verbatim formalized written form is adopted, which is more akin to the written
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...
.
However, it is only non-verbatim with respect to vernacular Cantonese as it is possible to read Standard Chinese text verbatim in formal Cantonese, often with only slight changes in lexicon that are optional depending on the reader's choice of register. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar but are pronounced differently. Conversely, written (vernacular) Cantonese is mostly used in informal settings like social media and comic books.
Names of Cantonese
In English, the term "Cantonese" can be ambiguous. "Cantonese" as used to refer to the language native to the city of Canton, which is the traditional English name of
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
, was popularized by ''An English and Cantonese Pocket Dictionary'' (1859), a bestseller by the missionary
John Chalmers.
Before 1859, this variant was often referred to in English as "the Canton dialect".
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" ( zh, s=粤语, t=粵語, cy=Yuhtyúh, j=Jyut6 jyu5, first=t, labels=no). In this article, "Cantonese" is used for Cantonese proper.
Historically, speakers called this variety "Canton speech" ( zh, s=广州话, t=廣州話, cy=Gwóngjāu wá, j=Gwong2 zau1 waa2, first=t, labels=no), although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong and Guangxi, people also call it "provincial capital speech" ( zh, s=省城话, t=省城話, cy=Sáangsèhng wá, j=Saang2 seng4 waa2, first=t, labels=no) or "plain speech" ( zh, s=白话, t=白話, cy=Baahkwá, j=Baak6 waa2, first=t, labels=no). In academic linguistic circles, it is also referred to as "Canton prefecture speech" ( zh, s=广府话, t=廣府話, cy=Gwóngfú wá, j=Gwong2 fu2 waa2, first=t, labels=no).
In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, the language is referred to as "Guangdong speech" or "Canton Province Speech" ( zh, s=广东话, t=廣東話, cy=Gwóngdūng wá, j=Gwong2 dung1 waa2, first=t, labels=no) or simply as "Chinese" ( zh, c=中文, cy=Jūngmán, j=Zung1 man2, labels=no).
History

During the
Southern Song period, Guangzhou became the cultural center of the region. Cantonese emerged as the
prestige variety
Prestige in sociolinguistics is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally co ...
of
Yue Chinese
Yue () is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Northern and southern China, Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang).
The term Cantonese is often used to refer ...
when the port city of
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
on the
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area in official documents, ...
became the largest port in China, with a trade network stretching as far as Arabia. Specifically, the mutually intelligible speech of the ''Sam Yap'' ( zh, t=三邑 , y=Sāam Yāp, labels=no), the Three Counties of Guangzhou, namely the historical counties of Panyu ( zh, 番禺, labels=no),
Nanhai ( zh, 南海, labels=no), and
Shunde ( zh, s=顺德, labels=no), came to be heralded as the standard.
Cantonese was also used in the popular ''Yuè'ōu'', ''Mùyú'' and ''Nányīn'' folksong genres, as well as
Cantonese opera. Additionally, a distinct classical literature was developed in Cantonese, with
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
texts sounding more similar to modern Cantonese than other present-day Chinese varieties, including Mandarin.
As Guangzhou became China's key commercial center for foreign trade and exchange in the 1700s, Cantonese became the variety of Chinese interacting most with the Western world. Much of the sources for this period of early Cantonese, such as the 18th century
rime dictionary ''Fenyun Cuoyao'' ( zh, t=分韻撮要, p=Fēnyùn Cuòyào, cy=Fān Wáhn Chyutyiu, labels=yes) and the 1828 ''Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect'' by the missionary
Robert Morrison, were written in Guangzhou during this period.
After the
First Opium War, centuries of maritime prohibitions ended. Large numbers of Cantonese people from the Pearl River Delta, especially merchants, subsequently migrated by boat to other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi. These migrants established enclaves of Cantonese in areas that primarily spoke other forms of Yue or even non-Sinitic languages such as
Zhuang, as with the case of the
Yong–Xun Yue dialect of
Nanning
Nanning; is the capital of the Guangxi, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China, southern China. It is known as the "Green City (绿城) " because of its abundance of lush subtropical foliage. Located in the South of Guangxi, Nanning ...
.
Many Cantonese migrants sailed also overseas, bringing the Cantonese language with them to Southeast Asia, North and South America, and Western Europe. Such enclaves of Cantonese are still found in
Chinatowns across many of these major cities outside China.
During the late 19th century, the pedagogical work ''Cantonese made easy'', written by
James Dyer Ball in 1883, articulated the provenance of the prestige accent of Cantonese: that of the district of
Xiguan ( zh, t=西關, s=西关, , j=Sai1 Gwaan1, cy=Sāigwāan, labels=yes) in the west of Guangzhou. It is known for its distinctive use of an
apical vowel (, or in more conventional
IPA: ) in some cases where modern Cantonese would use a final.
Throughout the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, the ancestors of most of the population of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
arrived from Guangzhou and surrounding areas after they were ceded to
Britain and
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...
, respectively. The influx of such migrants into Hong Kong established Cantonese as the main language of the colony, supplanting local Yue Chinese varieties, which were closer to the dialects of neighboring
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is a prefecture-level city in the province of Guangdong, China. A Special economic zones of China, special economic zone, it is located on the east bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of Guangdong ...
and
Dongguan
Dongguan,; pinyin: alternately romanized via Cantonese as Tungkun, is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. An important industrial city in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou t ...
, as well as the
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
and
Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
varieties of the region.
With subsequent waves of migration into Hong Kong, even as late as the 1950s, the proportion of native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong had not yet surpassed 50%; nonetheless, this figure has risen to above 90% since the 1970s.
On the other hand, the indigenous variety of Yue Chinese in Macau had been close to that of
Zhongshan
Zhongshan ( zh, c=中山 ), alternately romanized via Cantonese as Chungshan, is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is n ...
, and this has had an effect on the tonal phonology of the Cantonese spoken in Macau.
As a significant proportion of the entertainment industry in China migrated to Hong Kong in the early decades of the 20th century, the Hong Kong-based entertainment industry underwent a transformation to suit overseas as well as domestic audiences.
With the bifurcation of
the film industry into Cantonese and Mandarin,
the use of the Xiguan accent of Guangzhou as a conservative prestige accent of standard Cantonese was maintained in mass media, with films from the 1930s making prominent use of it. However, during this time many phonological changes can be detected, indicating the change from Early Cantonese to Modern Cantonese.
In mainland China,
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...
has been heavily promoted as the medium of instruction in schools and as the official language, especially after the communist takeover in 1949. Meanwhile, Cantonese has remained the official variety of Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau, both during and after the colonial period, under the policy of '
biliteracy and trilingualism' ( zh, t=兩文三語 , p=liǎngwén sānyǔ , j=loeng3 man4 saam1 jyu5). Government and law still function predominantly in Cantonese in these jurisdictions, and officials speak Cantonese even at the most formal occasions.
Geographic distribution
Hong Kong and Macau
The
official language
An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...
s of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
are Chinese and English, as defined in the
Hong Kong Basic Law
The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is a national law of China that serves as the organic law for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). With nine chapters, 160 article ...
. 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
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government) is the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong. It was established on 1 July 1997, following the ...
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
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
, 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. The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
with the Cantonese spoken in the mainland city of
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
, although there exist some minor differences in accent, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
China

Cantonese first developed around the port city of
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
in the
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area in official documents, ...
region of southeastern China. Due to the city's long standing role 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
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
and
Guangxi
Guangxi,; officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam (Hà Giang Province, Hà Giang, Cao Bằn ...
.
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. On the mainland, Cantonese continued to serve as the ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
'' of
Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
and
Guangxi
Guangxi,; officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam (Hà Giang Province, Hà Giang, Cao Bằn ...
even after Mandarin was made the official language of the government by the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
in the early 1900s. Cantonese remained a dominant and influential language in southeastern China until the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and its promotion of
Standard Mandarin Chinese as the sole official language of the nation throughout the last half of the 20th century, although its influence still remains strong within the region.
While the Chinese government encourages the use of Standard Mandarin rather than local varieties of Chinese in broadcasts,
Cantonese enjoys a relatively higher standing than other Chinese languages, with its own media and usage in public transportation in Guangdong province. Furthermore, it is also a medium of instruction in select academic curricula, including some university elective courses and
Chinese as a foreign language programs. The permitted usage of Cantonese in mainland China is largely a countermeasure against Hong Kong's influence, as its Cantonese-language media has a substantial exposure and following in Guangdong.
Nevertheless, the place of local Cantonese language and
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
remains contentious, as with other non-Mandarin Chinese languages. A 2010
proposal to switch some programming on Guangzhou television from Cantonese to Mandarin was abandoned following massive public protests, the largest since the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. As a major economic center of China, there have been concerns that the use of Cantonese in Guangzhou is diminishing in favour of Mandarin, both through the continual influx of Mandarin-speaking migrants from impoverished areas and strict government policies. As a result, Cantonese is being given a more important status by the natives than ever before as a common identity of the local people. This has led to initiatives to revive the language such as its introduction into school curricula and locally produced programs on broadcast media.
Southeast Asia
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
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
,
Teochew, and
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
. Additionally, Cantonese media and popular culture such as
Hong Kong cinema is popular throughout the region.
Vietnam
In
Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
, Cantonese is the dominant language of the main ethnic Chinese community, usually referred to as ''
Hoa'', which numbers about one million people and constitutes one of the largest minority groups in the country.
Over half of the ethnic Chinese population in Vietnam speaks Cantonese as a native language and the variety also serves as a lingua franca between the different Chinese dialect groups. Many speakers reflect their exposure to
Vietnamese with a Vietnamese accent or a tendency to
code-switch between Cantonese and Vietnamese.
Malaysia
In
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, Cantonese is widely spoken among the
Malaysian Chinese
Malaysian Chinese, Chinese Malaysians, or Sino-Malaysians are Malaysians, Malaysian citizens of Chinese people, Chinese ethnicity. They form the second-largest ethnic group in Malaysia, after the Malaysian Malays, Malay majority, and , const ...
community in the capital city of
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...
and the surrounding areas in the
Klang Valley
Klang Valley () is an urban agglomeration in Malaysia that is centered in the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, and including their adjoining cities and towns in the state of Selangor. It is the urban area of the much larger Ku ...
(
Petaling Jaya
Petaling Jaya (), colloquially referred to as "PJ", is a city in Petaling District, in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. Originally developed as a Satellite city, satellite township for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, it is part of the G ...
,
Ampang,
Putrajaya
Putrajaya (), officially the Federal Territory of Putrajaya (), is the administrative centre of Malaysia. The Seat of government, seat of the Government of Malaysia, federal government of Malaysia was moved in 1999 from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajay ...
,
Cheras,
Selayang,
Sungai Buloh
Sungai Buloh, or Sungei Buloh, is a town, a mukim (commune) and a Dewan Rakyat, parliamentary constituency in the northern part of Petaling District, Selangor, Malaysia. The name itself means ''bamboo river'' in the Malay language. It is located ...
,
Puchong,
Shah Alam
Shah Alam (, from Persian language, Persian, meaning "king of the world") is a city and the state capital of Selangor, Malaysia which is situated within the Petaling District and a small portion of the neighbouring Klang District. Shah Alam rep ...
,
Kajang,
Bangi, and
Subang Jaya
Subang Jaya is a city in Petaling District, Selangor, Malaysia. It comprises the southern third district of Petaling. It consists of the neighbourhoods from SS12 to SS19, UEP Subang Jaya (USJ), Putra Heights, Batu Tiga as well as PJS7, PJ ...
). The language is also widely spoken as well in the town of
Sekinchan in the district of
Sabak Bernam located in the northern part of
Selangor
Selangor ( ; ), also known by the Arabic language, Arabic honorific Darul Ehsan, or "Abode of Sincerity", is one of the 13 states of Malaysia. It is on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia and is bordered by Perak to the north, Pahang to the e ...
state; the state of
Perak
Perak (; Perak Malay: ''Peghok'') is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Perak has land borders with the Malaysian states of Kedah to the north, Penang to the northwest, Kel ...
, especially in the state capital city of
Ipoh
Ipoh (, ) is the capital city of the Malaysian States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Perak. Located on the Kinta River, it is nearly north of Kuala Lumpur and southeast of George Town, Penang, George Town in neighbouring Penang ...
and its surrounding towns of
Gopeng
Gopeng (Jawi script, Jawi: ڬوڤيڠ) is a town located in Mukim Teja, Kampar District, Perak, Malaysia. It is situated approximately south of Ipoh, the state capital.
History
Gopeng was the most important town in the Kinta Valley until 1890 ...
,
Batu Gajah, and
Kampar of the
Kinta Valley region plus the towns of
Tapah and
Bidor in the southern part of the
Perak
Perak (; Perak Malay: ''Peghok'') is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Perak has land borders with the Malaysian states of Kedah to the north, Penang to the northwest, Kel ...
state; and most of the state of
Negeri Sembilan, especially in the state capital city of
Seremban, as well as the towns of
Port Dickson,
Kuala Pilah,
Bahau,
Tampin,
Rembau and
Gemas, with the exception of
Jelebu,
Mantin,
Nilai and
Kuala Klawang
Kuala Klawang (Negeri Sembilan Malay: ''Kolo Klawang'') is a mukim and the district capital of Jelebu District, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.
It is connected to the state capital, Seremban through Federal Route as well as to Hulu Langat District, ...
, where
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
and
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
predominate, respectively. Cantonese is also widely spoken in the eastern
Sabah
Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah has land borders with the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and Indonesia's North Kalima ...
an town of
Sandakan as well as the towns of
Kuantan,
Raub,
Bentong
Bentong, the seat of Bentong District, is a town located in western Pahang, Malaysia, at the border with the state of Selangor in the west and the state of Negeri Sembilan in the south.
Government
Bentong Municipal Council () is the local au ...
,
Temerloh,
Pekan,
Jerantut as well as
Cameron Highlands in Pahang state, and they are also found in other areas like
Sarikei, Sarawak, and
Mersing, Johor.
Although
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
is the most natively spoken variety of Chinese and Mandarin is the medium of education at
Chinese-language schools
A Chinese school () is a school that is established for the purpose of teaching the varieties of Chinese (in particular, Standard Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese), though the purpose can vary to teaching different aspects of Chinese culture such ...
, Cantonese is largely influential in the local Chinese media and is used in commerce by Chinese Malaysians.
Due to the popularity of
Hong Kong popular culture
The culture of Hong Kong is primarily a mix of Chinese culture, Chinese and Western culture, Western influences, stemming from Lingnan Cantonese roots and Hong Kong's status as a British Hong Kong, British colony from 1841 to 1997 (Jyutping: ...
, 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 spoken in Malaysia and Singapore often exhibits influences from
Malay and other Chinese varieties spoken in the country, like Hokkien and Teochew.
Singapore
The Singapore government uses Mandarin as the official Chinese variety and has a
Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) seeking to actively promote using Mandarin at the expense of other Chinese varieties. A little over 15% of Chinese households in Singapore speak Cantonese. Despite the government actively promoting SMC, the Cantonese-speaking Chinese community has been relatively successful in preserving its language from Mandarin compared with other dialect groups.
Notably, all nationally produced non-Mandarin Chinese TV and radio programs were stopped after 1979.
The prime minister,
Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew; 16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean politician who ruled as the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. He is widely recognised ...
, then, also stopped giving speeches in
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
to prevent giving conflicting signals to the people.
Hong Kong (Cantonese) and
Taiwanese dramas are unavailable in their untranslated form on free-to-air television, though drama series in non-Chinese languages are available in their original languages. Cantonese drama series on terrestrial TV channels are instead dubbed in Mandarin and broadcast without the original Cantonese audio and soundtrack. However, originals may be available through other sources like cable television and online videos.
Furthermore, an offshoot of SMC is the translation to
Hanyu Pinyin of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese varieties. For instance,
dim sum is often known as ''diǎn xīn'' in Singapore's English-language media, though this is largely a matter of style, and most Singaporeans will still refer to it as ''dim sum'' when speaking English.
Nevertheless, since the government restriction on media in non-Mandarin varieties was relaxed in the mid-1990s and 2000s, presence of Cantonese in Singapore has grown substantially. Forms of popular culture from Hong Kong, like
television series
A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming plat ...
,
cinema and
pop music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...
have become popular in Singaporean society, and non-dubbed original versions of the media became widely available. Consequently, the number of non-Cantonese Chinese Singaporeans being able to understand or speak Cantonese to some varying extent is growing, with a number of educational institutes offering Cantonese as an elective language course.
Cambodia
Cantonese is widely used as the inter-communal language among
Chinese Cambodians, especially in
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Cambodia, most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since 1865 and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its political, economic, industr ...
and other urban areas. While Teochew speakers form the majority of the Chinese population in
Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
, Cantonese is often used as a vernacular in commerce and with other Chinese variant groups in the nation. Chinese-language schools in Cambodia are conducted in both Cantonese and Mandarin, but schools may be conducted exclusively in one Chinese variant or the other.
Thailand
While
Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
is home to the
largest overseas Chinese community in the world, the vast majority of ethnic Chinese in the country speak Thai exclusively. Among Chinese-speaking Thai households, Cantonese is the fourth most-spoken Chinese variety after
Teochew,
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
and
Hainanese. Nevertheless, within the Thai Chinese commercial sector, it serves as a common language alongside Teochew or Thai. Chinese-language schools in Thailand have also traditionally been conducted in Cantonese. Furthermore, Cantonese serves as the lingua franca with other Chinese communities in the region.
Indonesia
In
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
, Cantonese is locally known as ''Konghu'' and is one of the variants spoken by the
Chinese Indonesian community, with speakers largely concentrated in certain major cities like
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...
,
Medan,
Surabaya
Surabaya is the capital city of East Java Provinces of Indonesia, province and the List of Indonesian cities by population, second-largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta. Located on the northeastern corner of Java island, on the Madura Strai ...
,
Makassar
Makassar ( ), formerly Ujung Pandang ( ), is the capital of the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, ...
,
Semarang
Semarang (Javanese script, Javanese: , ''Kutha Semarang'') is the capital and largest city of Central Java province in Indonesia. It was a major port during the Netherlands, Dutch Dutch East Indies, colonial era, and is still an important regio ...
,
Manado
Manado (, ) is the capital City status in Indonesia, city of the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of North Sulawesi. It is the second largest city in Sulawesi after Makassar, with the 2020 census giving a population of 451,916,Badan ...
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.
North America
United States

Over a period of 150 years (from 1850 to the 2000s), 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. In 2009, 458,840 Americans spoke Cantonese at home according to an American Community Survey.
The Zhongshan variant of Cantonese, which originated from 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
Locke, also known as Locke Historic District, is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta of California, United States. The was first developed between 1893 and 1915 approximat ...
). It is a Yuehai variety much like Guangzhou Cantonese but has "flatter" tones. Chinese is the second most widely spoken non-English language in the United States when both Cantonese and Mandarin are combined, behind Spanish. 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 Macau (beginning in the latter half of the 20th century and before the
handover
In cellular telecommunications, handover, or handoff, is the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another channel. In satellite communications it is the process of transf ...
) and Southeast Asia, with Cantonese as their native language. However, more recent immigrants are arriving from the rest of mainland China and Taiwan and most often speak
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...
(Putonghua) as their native language, although some may also speak their native local variety, such as
Shanghainese
The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan langua ...
,
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
,
Fuzhounese
The Fuzhou language ( zh, t=福州話, s=福州话, p=Fúzhōuhuà; Foochow Romanized, FR: ), also Foochow, Hokchew, Hok-chiu, or Fuzhounese, is the Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige variety of the Eastern Min branch of Min Chinese spoken ...
,
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
, etc. As a result, Mandarin is becoming more common among the Chinese American community.
The increase of Mandarin-speaking communities has resulted in the rise of separate neighborhoods or enclaves segregated by the primary Chinese variety spoken. Socioeconomic statuses are also a factor.
For example, in New York City, Cantonese still predominates in the city's
older, traditional western portion of
Chinatown in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
and in Brooklyn's small new Chinatowns in
Bensonhurst and
Homecrest. The newly emerged
Little Fuzhou
Little Fuzhou is a neighborhood in the Two Bridges, Manhattan, Two Bridges and Lower East Side areas of the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Little Fuzhou constitutes a portion of the greater Chinato ...
eastern portion of Manhattan's Chinatown and
Brooklyn's main large Chinatown in and around
Sunset Park are mostly populated by
Fuzhounese speakers, who often speak Mandarin as well. The Cantonese and Fuzhounese enclaves in New York City are more working class. However, due to the rapid gentrification of Manhattan's Chinatown and with NYC's Cantonese and Fuzhou populations now increasingly shifting to other Chinese enclaves in the
Outer Boroughs of NYC, such as
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
and
Queens
Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...
, but mainly in Brooklyn's newer Chinatowns, the Cantonese speaking population in NYC is now increasingly concentrated in
Bensonhurst's Little Hong Kong/Guangdong and
Homecrest's Little Hong Kong/Guangdong. The Fuzhou population of NYC is becoming increasingly concentrated in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, also known as
Little Fuzhou
Little Fuzhou is a neighborhood in the Two Bridges, Manhattan, Two Bridges and Lower East Side areas of the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Little Fuzhou constitutes a portion of the greater Chinato ...
, which is causing the city's growing Cantonese and Fuzhou enclaves to become increasingly distanced and isolated from both each other and other Chinese enclaves in Queens.
Flushing's Chinatown, which is now the largest Chinatown in the city, and
Elmhurst's smaller Chinatown in Queens are very diverse, with large numbers of Mandarin speakers from different regions of China and Taiwan. The Chinatowns of Queens comprise the primary cultural center for New York City's Chinese population and are more middle class.
In
Northern California
Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...
, especially the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...
, Cantonese has historically dominated in the Chinatowns of
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
and
Oakland, as well as the surrounding suburbs and metropolitan area, although since the late 2000s a concentration of Mandarin speakers has formed in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
. In contrast,
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
hosts a much larger Mandarin-speaking population, with Cantonese found in more historical Chinese communities such as that of
Chinatown, Los Angeles, and older Chinese ethnoburbs such as
San Gabriel,
Rosemead, and
Temple City. Mandarin predominates in much of the
emergent Chinese American enclaves in eastern Los Angeles County and other areas of the metropolitan region.
While a number of more-established Taiwanese immigrants have learned Cantonese to foster relations with the traditional Cantonese-speaking Chinese American population, more recent arrivals and the larger number of mainland Chinese immigrants have largely continued to use Mandarin as the exclusive variety of Chinese. This has led to a
linguistic discrimination that has also contributed to social conflicts between the two sides, with a growing number of Chinese Americans (including
American-born Chinese
American-born Chinese (abbreviated as ABC) is a term widely used to refer to Chinese people who were born in the United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily ...
) of Cantonese background defending the historic Chinese-American culture against the impacts of increasing Mandarin-speaking new arrivals.
Canada
Cantonese is the most common Chinese variety spoken among
Chinese Canadians. According to the
Canada 2016 census
The 2016 Canadian census was an enumeration of Canadian residents, which counted a population of 35,151,728, a change from its 2011 population of 33,476,688. The census, conducted by Statistics Canada, was Canada's seventh quinquennial censu ...
, there were 565,275 Canadian residents who reported Cantonese as their native language. Among the self-reported Cantonese speakers, 44% were born in Hong Kong, 27% were born in Guangdong Province in China, and 18% were Canadian-born. Cantonese-speakers can be found in every city with a Chinese community. The majority of Cantonese-speakers in Canada live in the
Greater Toronto Area
The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the Toronto, City of Toronto and the regional municipality, regional municipalities of Regional Municipality of Durham, Durham, Regional Municipality of Halton, Halton, Regional ...
and
Metro Vancouver
The Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD), or simply Metro Vancouver, is a Canadian political subdivision and Corporation, corporate entity representing the metropolitan area of Greater Vancouver, designated by provincial legislation as o ...
. There are sufficient Cantonese-speakers in Canada that there exist locally produced Cantonese TV and radio programming, such as
Fairchild TV.
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
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and 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.
Western Europe
United Kingdom
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.
France
Among the
Chinese community in France, Cantonese is spoken by immigrants who fled the former
French Indochina
French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...
(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.
Portugal
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.
Australia
Cantonese was the dominant Chinese language of the
Chinese Australian community from the time the first ethnic Chinese settlers arrived in the 1850s 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. By 2016, those numbers became 596,711 and 280,943.
Cultural role
Spoken Chinese exhibits a multitude of regional and local varieties, many of which are
mutually unintelligible. The majority of these varieties are not widely spoken outside of their native regions, although they may be encountered in other parts of the world. Additionally, numerous varieties possess both literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters for newer standard reading sounds. Since a 1909 decree of the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
, the government of China has promoted
Mandarin for use in education, the media, and official communications.
However, the proclamation of
Mandarin as the official national language was not fully accepted by the Cantonese authorities in the early 20th century. Proponents of the regional uniqueness of their local language and the commercial importance of the region argued that Cantonese should be preserved. In contrast to other non-Mandarin Chinese varieties, Cantonese persists in a few state
television
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
and
radio broadcasts today.
Nevertheless, there have been recent efforts to reduce the use of Cantonese in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. The most notable of these has been the 2010 proposal put forth by
Guangzhou Television
The Guangzhou Broadcasting Network (), also known as GZBN, is a municipally-owned television network in Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China. The television department made its first broadcast on 10 January 1988, while radio depart ...
, which called for an increase in Mandarin broadcasts at the expense of Cantonese programmes. This, however, resulted in protests in Guangzhou, which ultimately dissuaded the authorities from pursuing the proposal. Furthermore, there are reports of students being punished for speaking other
Chinese languages
The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split b ...
at school, which has led to a reluctance among 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.
Due to the linguistic history of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
, and the use of Cantonese in many established
overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese people are Chinese people, people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 milli ...
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.
Increasingly since the
1997 handover, Cantonese has been used as a symbol of local identity in Hong Kong, largely through the
development of democracy in the territory and
desinicization practices to emphasise a separate Hong Kong identity.
A similar identity issue exists in the United States, where conflicts have arisen among Chinese-speakers due to a large recent influx of Mandarin-speakers. While older Taiwanese immigrants have learned Cantonese to foster integration within the traditional Chinese American populations, more recent arrivals from the mainland continue to use Mandarin exclusively. This has contributed to a segregation of communities based on linguistic cleavage. In particular, some Chinese Americans (including
American-born Chinese
American-born Chinese (abbreviated as ABC) is a term widely used to refer to Chinese people who were born in the United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily ...
) of Cantonese background emphasise their non-mainland origins (e.g. Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, etc.) to assert their identity in the face of new waves of immigration.
Along with Mandarin and
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
, Cantonese has its own popular music,
Cantopop
Cantopop (a contraction of "Cantonese pop music") is a genre of pop music sung in Cantonese. Cantopop is also used to refer to the cultural context of its production and consumption. The genre began in the 1970s and became associated with Hon ...
, which is the predominant genre in Hong Kong. Many artists from the mainland and Taiwan have learned Cantonese to break into the market.
Popular native Mandarin-speaking singers, including
Faye Wong
Faye Wong ( zh, 王菲; pinyin: ''Wáng Fēi''; born 8 August 1969) is a Chinese singer-songwriter and actress. Early in her career, she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong (). Born in Beijing, she moved to British Hong Kong at the age o ...
,
Eric Moo, and singers from Taiwan, have been trained in Cantonese to add "Hong Kong-ness" to their performances.
Cantonese films date to the early days of Chinese cinema, and the first Cantonese talkie, ', was made in 1932 by the
Tianyi Film Company
Tianyi Film Company (), also called Unique Film Productions, was one of the "big three" film production companies in pre-Second World War Republic of China. Founded in Shanghai in 1925 by the Shaw (Shao) brothers led by Runje Shaw (Shao Zuiweng ...
. Despite a ban on Cantonese films by the
Nanjing authority in the 1930s, Cantonese film production continued in Hong Kong which was then under British colonial rule.
From the mid-1970s to the 1990s,
Cantonese films made in Hong Kong were very popular in the Chinese speaking world.
Phonology
Initials and finals
The de facto standard for Cantonese pronunciation is that of
Canton (
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
). While there are some minor phonological variations between
Hong Kong Cantonese
Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of Cantonese spoken primarily in Hong Kong. As the most commonly spoken language in Hong Kong, it shares a recent and direct lineage with the Guangzhou ( Canton) dialect.
Due to the colonial heritage of Hong ...
and standard Guangzhou Cantonese, the two forms are almost identical.
The phonemic systems of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
and Macau exhibit a tendency to merge certain phoneme pairs. Despite the fact that this phenomenon has been described as a lazy sound/pronunciation () furthermore, this pronunciation is regarded as inferior to that of Guangzhou, and has been prevalent in the territories since the early 20th century. The most notable difference between Hong Kong and Guangzhou pronunciation is substituting liquid nasal for nasal initial in many words. An example is manifested in the word for you (), pronounced as
ei˩˧in Guangzhou and as
ei˩˧in Hong Kong.
Another key feature of Hong Kong Cantonese is the two syllabic nasals and merging. This can be exemplified in the elimination of the contrast of sounds between 吳 (
Ng, a surname) (
�̩˨˩in Guangzhou pronunciation) and (not) (
̩˨˩in Guangzhou pronunciation). Hong Kong Cantonese pronounce both words as the latter.
Lastly, the initials and are merging into and when followed by . An example is in the word for country (國), pronounced in standard Guangzhou as ''
ʷɔk' but as ''
ɔk' with the merge. Unlike the above two differences, this merge is alongside the standard pronunciation in Hong Kong rather than being replaced. Educated speakers often stick to the standard pronunciation but can exemplify the merged pronunciation in casual speech. In contrast, less educated speakers pronounce the merge more frequently.
Less prevalent, but still notable differences found among a number of Hong Kong speakers include:
*Merging initial into null initial
*Merging and codas into and codas respectively, eliminating contrast between these pairs of finals (except after and ): -, -, -, -, - and -.
*Merging the rising tones ( 2nd and 5th).
Cantonese vowels tend to be traced further back to
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
than their Mandarin analogues, such as M. /aɪ/ vs. C. /ɔːi/; M. /i/ vs. C. /ɐi/; M. /ɤ/ vs. C. /ɔː/; M. /ɑʊ/ vs. C. /ou/ etc. For consonants, some differences include M. /ɕ, tɕ, tɕʰ/ vs. C. /h, k, kʰ/; M. /ʐ/ vs. C. /j/; and a greater syllable coda diversity in Cantonese (like syllables ending in ''-p'', ''-t'' or ''-k'').
Tones
Generally speaking, Cantonese is a
tonal language with six phonetic tones, two more than the four in Standard Chinese Mandarin. This makes Cantonese in general harder to master due to required ability of users to readily be able to process two additional phonetic tones. People who grew up using Cantonese tones can usually hear the tonal differences with no problem, but adults who were brought up speaking non-tonal languages like English and most Western European languages may not be able to distinguish the tonal differences quick enough to optimally use the language. This difficulty also applies to tonal language speakers with fewer tones attempting to master languages with more tones such as Mandarin natives trying to learn spoken Cantonese as adults.
Historically, finals that end in a
stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
were considered as "
checked tone
A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the western phonetic sense but rathe ...
s" and treated separately by
diachronic convention, identifying Cantonese with nine tones (). However, these are seldom counted as
phonemic
A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...
tones in modern linguistics, which prefer to analyse them as
conditioned by the following consonant.
Written Cantonese
As Cantonese is predominantly utilised in Hong Kong, Macau, and other overseas Chinese communities, it is typically inscribed with traditional Chinese characters. Nevertheless, it incorporates supplementary characters and characters with disparate meanings from written vernacular Chinese, due to the presence of lexical items that are either absent from standard Chinese or correspond with spoken Cantonese. This written Cantonese system frequently manifests in colloquial contexts, such as entertainment magazines, social media, and advertisements.
In contrast, formal literature, professional and government documents, television and movie subtitles, and news media continue to use standard written Chinese. Nevertheless, colloquial characters may be present in formal written communications such as legal testimonies and newspapers when an individual is being quoted, rather than paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standard written Chinese.
Romanization
Systems of Cantonese romanization are based on the accents of Canton and Hong Kong and have helped define the concept of Standard Cantonese. The major systems are (in order of their invention from newest to oldest):
Jyutping
The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).
The name ''Jyutping'' (itself the Jyutping ro ...
, the Chinese government's
Guangdong Romanization,
Yale,
Meyer–Wempe, and
Standard Romanization. Jyutping and Yale are the two most used and taught systems today in the West,
and they do not differ greatly from one another except in how they mark tones. Additionally, Hong Kong linguist
Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course, and his variant is another system in use today.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
's and
Macau
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...
's governments use systems of romanization for proper names and geographic locations, but they transcribe some sounds inconsistently. These systems are not taught in schools. Macau's system differs slightly from Hong Kong's in that the spellings are influenced by
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or ) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tom� ...
due to colonial history. For example, while many words in Macau's system are the same as Hong Kong's (e.g. surnames ''Lam'' 林, ''Chan'' 陳), instances of the letter under Hong Kong's system are often replaced by in Macau's (e.g. ''Chau'' vs. ''Chao'' 周, ''Leung'' vs ''Leong'' 梁). Neither the spellings of Hong Kong's system nor of Macau's look very similar to mainland China's system called
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
, chiefly because it distinguishes between Mandarin's two series of stops while they, although the pronunciation of Standard Cantonese's two series is similar to the Mandarin, do not generally distinguish them, they thus rendering not only /pʰ/, /tʰ/, and so forth, but also /p/, /t/, and the remaining non-aspirates, by the simple spellings , , etc. vs. it rendering the latter series by , , and the like.
Early Western efforts
Systematic efforts to develop an alphabetic representation of Cantonese began with Protestant missionaries arriving in China early in the nineteenth century. Romanization was considered both a tool to help new missionaries learn the variety more easily and a quick route for the unlettered to achieve gospel-literacy. Earlier Catholic missionaries, mostly Portuguese, had developed romanization-schemes for the pronunciation current in the court and capital city of China but made few efforts to romanize other varieties.
Robert Morrison, the first
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
missionary in China, published a ''Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect'' (1828) with a rather unsystematic romanized pronunciation.
Elijah Coleman Bridgman and
Samuel Wells Williams in their ''Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect'' (1841) were the progenitors of a long-lived lineage of related romanizations that with minor variations are embodied in the works of
James Dyer Ball,
Ernst Johann Eitel, and
Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr (1910). Bridgman and Williams based their system on the phonetic alphabet and diacritics proposed by
Sir William Jones for South Asian languages.
Their system of romanization embodied the phonological system of a local-dialect rhyme-dictionary, the ''Fenyun cuoyao'', which was widely used and easily obtainable at the time and is still available today. Samuel Wells Willams' ''Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect'' (''Yinghua fenyun cuoyao'', 1856) is an alphabetic rearrangement, translation, and annotation of this ''Fenyun''. To adapt the system to the needs of users in an era when there was no standard, but rather only a range of local variants—although the speech of the western suburbs (Xiguan 西關) of Guangzhou was the prestige variety—Williams suggested that users learn and follow their teacher's pronunciation of his chart of Cantonese syllables. It was apparently Bridgman's innovation to mark the tones with (for the upper-register ones) open circles vs. (for the lower-register tones) underlined open circles, in either case at the four corners of the romanized word in analogy with the traditional Chinese system of marking the tone of a character with a circle (lower left for "even", upper left for "rising", upper right for "going", and lower right for "entering" tones).
John Chalmers in his ''English and Cantonese Pocket-Dictionary'' (1859) simplified the tone-markings by using: a syllable-final acute accent to mark "rising" tones, a syllable-final grave one to mark the "going" tones, no diacritic for the "even" tones, and italics (or in hand-written work underlining) to mark tones as belonging to the upper register. "Entering" tones could be distinguished by the consonants with which they end (p/t/k).
Nicholas Belfeld Dennys used Chalmers' romanization in his primer. This method of marking tones was in most of its details used later also by the
Yale romanization, where however, importantly, instead of the upper-register tones being marked by italics, the lower-register ones are marked by an 'h' (which comes after whatever letter spells the last vocalic element in the syllable). Another innovation of Chalmers in this dictionary was to eliminate acute/grave accents on top of vowels by adding more distinctions of vowel-spelling (e.g. a/aa, o/oh), so that the presence vs. absence of an accent over the vowel was no longer needed to distinguish different pronunciations of it.
This new style of romanization still embodied the phonology of the ''Fenyun'', and the name of
Tipson is associated with its particular variety that then was fixed upon by his missionary peers to become
Standard Romanization. This was the system used importantly: (with virtually no deviation) by
Meyer-Wempe's dictionary, (even more faithfully) by Cowles' dictionaries (of 1917 & 1965), by O'Melia's textbook, and by many other works in the first two thirds of the twentieth century. It reigned without serious challenge as the standard spelling until Yale's system was devised and became an important rival to it.
The major linguist
Y. R. Chao developed a Cantonese adaptation of his
Gwoyeu Romatzyh system. It was first used in Chao's ''Cantonese Primer'', published in 1947 by Harvard University Press (which then in 1948, changed by him very little beyond swapping in of Pekingese for the Cantonese, became his ''Mandarin Primer'', published by the same Press). The system was then modified by K. M. A. Barnett in 1950 into the
Barnett-Chao romanization system. The B–C system was used in a handful of texts, including textbooks published by the Hong Kong government, such as ''Cantonese Conversation Grammar'', published in 1963.
Cantonese romanization in Hong Kong
An influential work on Cantonese, ''
A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton,'' written by
Wong Shik Ling, was published in 1941. He devised an
IPA-based system of transcription, the
S. L. Wong system, used by many Chinese dictionaries later published in Hong Kong. Although Wong also devised a romanization-scheme, likewise known as the
S. L. Wong system, the latter is not as widely used as his transcription. This system succeeded the
Barnett–Chao system as being the one used by the Hong Kong Government Language School.
The
Linguistic Society of Hong Kong
The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is a non-profit academic association, which was formally registered as a charitable organization in Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations ...
(LSHK) has advocated the romanization it devised (and named
Jyutping
The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK).
The name ''Jyutping'' (itself the Jyutping ro ...
). An arguable advantage of it is that its particular use of J for instance (as at the beginning of its name) matches IPA in contrast to most other systems' using Y, resembling English. Some effort has been made to promote Jyutping, but it has yet to be examined how successfully this has caused use of it to proliferate in the region.
Another popular scheme is
ILE romanisation, the only system of romanization accepted by the
Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau and
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority
The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA), previously known as the Hong Kong Examinations Authority (HKEA) before 2002, is a statutory body of the Hong Kong Government responsible for the administration of public examinatio ...
. Books and studies for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools usually use this scheme, but some teachers and students use S.L. Wong's system of transcription.
Those learning Cantonese may feel frustrated that, despite efforts to standardize Cantonese romanizations, most native Cantonese speakers, regardless of their level of education, are unfamiliar with any romanization beyond the conventional, Latin-letter spellings of Cantonese names. Because Cantonese is primarily a spoken language, meaning that its speakers do not in most genres of writing use its own writing-system (instead, in most of their writing, despite having some Chinese characters unique to Cantonese, primarily following modern standard Chinese, which is closely tied to Mandarin), therefore, it is not taught in schools. As a result, locals do not learn any of these systems. In contrast to the general use of romanization in Mandarin-speaking areas of China, systems of romanization for Cantonese are excluded from the educational systems of both Hong Kong and the province of Guangdong. In practice, Hong Kong follows a loose, unnamed romanization-scheme used by the
Government of Hong Kong.
Google's Cantonese input uses Yale, Jyutping, or Cantonese Pinyin (ILE romanisation), the Yale being the first standard.
Comparison
Differences between the three main standards are . Jyutping and ILE recognize certain sounds used in a few colloquial words (like 掉, 舔, and 夾) but have not been officially recognized in other systems like Yale. Letters ''Q'', ''R'', ''V'' and ''X'' are not used in any of the systems.
Initials
Finals
Tones
Sample text
The following is a sample text in Cantonese of Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...
with English.
See also
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Cantonese grammar
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Cantonese profanity
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Cantonese slang
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Cantonese nationalism
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Languages of China
There are several hundred languages in the People's Republic of China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijing dialect, Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as ''Hany ...
*
List of English words of Chinese origin
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List of varieties of Chinese
The following is a list of Sinitic languages and their dialects. For a traditional dialectological overview, see also varieties of Chinese.
Classification
"Chinese" is a blanket term covering many different varieties spoken across China. Ma ...
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Protection of the varieties of Chinese
Notes
References
Citations
Works cited
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Further reading
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External links
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Cantonese-English Online Dictionary(archived 22 May 2011)
Cantonese Tools*
{{Authority control
Cantonese
Cantonese culture
Languages of China
Languages of Hong Kong
Languages of Macau
Languages of Vietnam
Languages of Malaysia
Languages of Singapore
Articles containing video clips
Syllable-timed languages