Yue
Speakers of Yue, or Cantonese, include Chinese speakers in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces and in many overseas Chinese communities. Cantonese is the most common form of the Chinese language or dialect heard in Chinatowns around the world. Hong Kong continued to use the dialect as a medium of instruction during British colonial rule. Yue is very different from Mandarin (putonghua; "standard" Chinese). Yuehua, or "Yue speech," is a more formal name given by linguists to the Cantonese language, particularly when they are referring to all of the many related subdialects and not just to the standard Cantonese that is centered on the cities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The speakers of Yuehua are among the most populous of Chinese people.
Guangdong and Guangxi are often referred to as the liang guang, or the "two Guangs"; as liang yue, the "two yue"; or as Lingnan, which means "south of the mountain range." Strictly speaking, the term Cantonese refers only to one subdialect of Yuehua, the vernacular spoken in the city of Guangzhou (Canton). The forms of Yuehua are actually diverse. Even in Guangzhou and the surrounding area, there are sharp subdialectical differences. Seven dialect areas have been identified in Guangdong, most of them in the Zhu (Pearl) River Delta and western Guangdong— Guangfu (the speech of Canton), Yongxun, Gaoyang, Siyi (four districts), Goulou, Wuhua, and Qinlan. These are spoken around specific geographical areas.
Guangdong; Guangxi; Hong Kong; Mandarin; Tang Dynasty
Further Reading
Moser, Leo J. (1985) The Chinese Mosaic: The People and Provinces of China. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Pan, Lynn. ed. (1998) The Encyclopaedia of the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Chinese Heritage Centre.
Whitaker, Donald P., Rinn-Suip Shinn, Helen A. Barth, Judith M. Heimann, John E. MacDonald, Kenneth W. Martindale, and John O. Weaver. (1972) Area Handbook for the People's Republic of China. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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