Cantonese

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese (^t廣東話, ^s广东话; originally known as ^t廣州話, ^s广州话), is the dialect of Yue Chinese spoken in the vicinity of Canton in southern China. It is the traditional prestige dialect of Yue.

Cantonese is the language of the Cantonese people. Inside mainland China, it is a lingua franca in Guangdong Province and some neighbouring areas, such as the eastern part of Guangxi Province. It is the majority language of Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta region of China. It is also traditionally the most spoken variety of Chinese among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore) and the Western world, especially Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and the United States.

While the term Cantonese refers narrowly to the prestige variety described in this article, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue branch of Chinese, including related dialects such as Taishanese. When standard Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified as one variant, there are about 80 million total speakers.