Is Cantonese a language?

Cantonese is a language and was defined as a language by UNESCO in 2009.

Cantonese, that is, Cantonese, is one of the seven dialects of Chinese tone language and Chinese, belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family, and is also the mother tongue of Guangfu people of Han nationality.

20 1 1 survey shows that the population of Guangdong is about 67 million, plus about 25 million in Guangxi, 7 million in Hong Kong, 550,000 in Macau, 5 million in Thailand, 5 million in Singapore and Malaysia, 2 million in the United States and Canada, and nearly 654.38+0.2 billion people worldwide use Cantonese.

Extended data

The origin of Cantonese

The name of "Yue" comes from "Nanyue" in ancient Lingnan area of China (Hanshu as "Nanyue"). "Yue" is a generic term, and the old sayings "Yue" and "Yue" are interchangeable words. Tribes south of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are often referred to as "Yue" in ancient books before Qin Dynasty, while they are called Baiyue and Baiyue in literature, including "wuyue" (southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang), "Min Yue" (Fujian) and.

After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the meanings of "Yue" and "Yue" began to differ. The former is mostly used in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Wu-speaking areas, while the latter is mostly used in Lingnan and Guangdong, which has long been a general term for Lingnan areas. Cantonese is commonly known as "vernacular" in Guangdong and Guangxi, "Cantonese" and "Guangfu dialect" at home and abroad, and "Tang dialect" in Chinatown in the United States.

The names "Guangfu dialect" and "provincial dialect" refer to the old guangzhou fu area (now Guangzhou and the surrounding Nanfanshun area); Guangfu dialect refers to guangzhou fu dialect in a narrow sense (original meaning) and Cantonese in a broad sense (cultural generalization).

Baidu encyclopedia cantonese