Cantonese
Language · official in 1 country
Cantonese took its English name from Canton, the old spelling of Guangzhou, where the language grew up; the name spread with John Chalmers's pocket dictionary of 1859. It is the prestige variety of Yue Chinese, written in traditional characters and spoken with six tones, and the working form of Chinese in the governments of Macau and Hong Kong.
The language on record
- Own name
- 粵語
- ISO 639-3
- YUE
- Script
- Chinese, traditional
- Family
- Sinitic
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Cantonese is official
Macau is the only territory whose record names Cantonese itself, beside Portuguese and Standard Chinese. Hong Kong's record lists Standard Chinese, although Cantonese is the spoken form its government and courts use.
Official beside Cantonese
About Cantonese
What the word Cantonese covers
In linguistics Cantonese means the speech of Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta. In wider use it can mean the whole Yue branch, including Taishanese, which Cantonese speakers understand only in part. Speakers have called it Guangzhou speech, provincial capital speech, and in Hong Kong and Macau Guangdong speech or simply Chinese. Before 1859 English writers called it the Canton dialect.
Why Macau and Hong Kong speak it
Macau was ceded to Portugal in 1557 and Hong Kong to Britain in 1842, but most of their Chinese population descends from migrants who came from Guangzhou in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Hong Kong they displaced local Yue varieties. On the mainland Standard Mandarin was promoted in schools and government, especially after 1949, while the two territories kept Cantonese through and after colonial rule under the policy of biliteracy and trilingualism. Macau's law makes Chinese official alongside Portuguese, and Cantonese is the form the government speaks.
How spoken Cantonese reaches the page
Formal writing, subtitles, news and government papers use standard written Chinese, which reads aloud in formal Cantonese with small changes of wording. Written vernacular Cantonese, with extra characters of its own, appears in entertainment magazines and on social media, and in newspapers when a speaker is quoted. Cantonese and Mandarin share much vocabulary but are barely mutually intelligible, mostly because of their sounds. Cantonese has six tones against Mandarin's four; older convention counted nine by treating syllables that end in a stop as separate tones.
Common questions
Questions about Cantonese
Can Mandarin speakers understand Cantonese?
Very little, if at all. The two share much vocabulary and a written standard, but their sounds, some grammar and verb placement differ, so a text that looks the same is read aloud differently.
How many tones does Cantonese have?
Six, two more than Standard Mandarin. Traditional counts give nine, because syllables ending in a stop consonant were once classed as separate checked tones.
Is Cantonese official in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong's Basic Law names Chinese and English without naming a variety. Cantonese is the de facto spoken form of Chinese in its government and its courts, and schools teach in it alongside English.
Is written Cantonese different from written Chinese?
It can be. Formal texts use standard written Chinese. Informal writing records vernacular Cantonese word for word and needs extra characters for words that standard Chinese lacks.