Cantonese

• Of, or pertaining to, the people of, or things from, Guangdong Province in China.
• The major spoken dialect of the people of Guangdong Province.
• Cuisine of the style historically popularized in Guangzhou, capitol of Guangdong ("genuine") or, broadly, of immigrants abroad who have origins in Guangdong.

The term Cantonese clearly derives its origin from "Canton", the old name given by Westerners to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province. Most likely, it is a metonymy corruption of the Cantonese pronunciation Gwong Dung, the name of the province, which used to be romanized as Kwang Tung. Interestingly, in Japanese, the name of the province is pronounced kanton, which seems to be the onyomi pronunciation of the kanji. This provides us with another clue about the history of this word.

The language

Cantonese -- which in Cantonese is pronounced gwongdungwah, or more formally, yuet yue (the Yuet language, yuet being a formal word for the region now known as Guangdong and Guangxi) -- is a language of seven tones spoken largely in Guangdong's cities (including Hong Kong and Macau), and in most Chinatowns around the world. It is the lingua franca of the Chinese diaspora, spoken by about 70 million people worldwide. There are at least four major dialect groups of Cantonese: Yuehai (including Zhongshan, or Chungshan, and Tungkuan), the dialect spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau; Siyi (sei yap), exemplified by Taishan (Toisaan, Hoisaan) dialect, which used to be ubiquitous in American Chinatowns before 1970; Gaoyang, as spoken in Yangjiang; and Guinan (Nanning dialect) spoken widely in Guangxi. However, Cantonese generally refers to the Yuehai dialect.

For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province has been the home of most Chinese immigrants; one county near its center, Taishan (where the siyi or sei yap dialect of Cantonese is spoken), alone may have been the home to more than 60% of Chinese immigrants to the US before 1965, and as a result, Guangdong dialects such as sei yap (the dialects of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, Xinhui Counties) and what we understand to be mainstream Cantonese (with a heavy Hong Kong influence) have been the major spoken dialects abroad. As more and different kinds of Chinese emigrate however, the situation is now changing, so that Min (Hokkien, or Fujianese dialect speakers) and Wu dialect speakers are also now heard, as well as hanyu (or "Mandarin") in increasing numbers from Taiwanese and mainland immigrants.

In addition, there are at least three other major languages spoken in Guangdong Province -- hanyu, which is official standard Beijing Chinese (or 'Mandarin'), spoken in official occasions, used in education, and among the many internal migrants from the north seeking work in the relatively prosperous south; Minnan (Southern Min) spoken in the eastern regions bordering Fujian, such as those from Chaozhou and Shantou; and Hakka, the language of the Hakka (guest people) ethnic minority, with whom the Han ethnic majority (or bendi, natives) fought bloody wars during the Qing Dynasty. Hanyu is mandatory through the state education system, but in the household, the popularization of Cantonese-language media (Hong Kong films, television serials, and pop music, most notably), isolation from the north, and the economic strength of the Cantonese diaspora ensure that the language has a life of its own.

Despite the popularity of Cantonese, most universities in the US do not and have not historically taught Cantonese, but hanyu, language of the Han ethnic majority, which is shared by both regimes in Beijing and Taipei as the official language of the Chinese people. Formally, written Cantonese does not exist; almost always formal written communication is conducted in hanyu. But in fact, over time, Cantonese has modified hanyu characters for unique expressions, syntax, and words. As a result, informally, written Cantonese does in fact exist, although used mostly for transcription of speech and informal forms of communications. However, they are so important for communication, that the government of Hong Kong has incorporated them into a special Supplemental Character Set (HKSCS).

There are several major romanization schemes for Cantonese in circulation: Barnett-Chao, Meyer-Wempe, and Yale -- while they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today. The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified Yale for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course, so that is also another system used today by contemporary Cantonese learners. The current one advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and more familiar system of Yale romanization, but departs considerably from it in a number of ways unfamiliar to Yale users. Some effort has been undertaken to promote jyutping but it is too early to tell how successful it has been.