Language > Chinese (Cantonese)
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Cantonese or Yue (粵語) is a major Chinese dialect group or language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Inside Hong Kong, it is known as 廣東話 (Mandarin: Guǎngdōng Huà, Cantonese transcription: gwong2 dung1 waa6). Outside of Hong Kong it is referred to as 粵語 (Mandarin: Yuè Yǔ). 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 in Guangdong and some parts of Guangxi in southern mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.[3] Cantonese is the de facto official language of Hong Kong. Other major groups include Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia. The name has been stated as being derived from Canton; a name in English for Guangdong province,[4] and Canton; a name in English for Guangzhou city.[5] The currently most popular romanization for learning Cantonese in the United States is Yale Romanization.
Different dialects of Cantonese exist; the most widely spoken is the Guangzhou dialect, often 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 the world. In addition to the Guangzhou dialect, the Taishan dialect, one of the sei yap or siyi (四邑) dialects that come from Guangdong counties that were the origin of the majority of Exclusion-era Cantonese-Chinese emigrants to the USA, 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.
Source: Wikipedia