Cantonese (linguistics)

Cantonese or Yue (粵語) is a major dialect group or language of the Chinese language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Cantonese is spoken by 71 million people. The area with the highest concentration are in Guangdong and some parts of Guangxi in southern mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Other major groups include Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia and by many overseas Chinese of Guangdong and Hong Kong origin worldwide. The name is derived from Canton, a former romanized Western name for Guangdong.

Different dialects of Cantonese exist, the most widely spoken is the Guangzhou dialect, also referred to simply as "Cantonese". The Guangzhou dialect is a lingua franca of not just Guangdong province, but also the overseas Cantonese speaking diaspora. The Guangzhou dialect is also spoken in Hong Kong, one of the financial and cultural centres of China. In addition to the Guangzhou dialect, the Taishan dialect, one of the sei yap or siyi (四邑) dialects that come from Guangdong counties from whence a majority of Exclusion-era Cantonese-Chinese immigrants emigrated, continues to be spoken both by recent immigrants from Taishan and even by third-generation Chinese Americans of Cantonese ancestry alike.

Like other major varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is often considered a dialect of a single Chinese language for cultural or nationalistic reasons, though in practice Cantonese, like many other Chinese language varieties, is mutually unintelligible with many other Chinese "dialects". See Identification of the varieties of Chinese.