cantonese

it not strange for a person from the other province cannot understand the cantonese if they travel in guangzhou, because this dialect is large difference between mandarins. in guangzhou, you cannot understand the people saying anywhere even less learn to say. even if the cantonese is difficult to understand and to learn, it is really a characteristic dialect spoken by most of the cantonese. after the reform and opening, the economic of guangdong province has an explosive growth lead in china, and the guangdong is richly endowed by nature, such as geographic location, is the foreland of china. with the advantages of the external trade and most people in hong kong and macao are speak cantonese, also about the resident chinese. so many people, such as from the north china to south, or the business men who invest in guangdong all want to learn cantonese for can communicate with cantonese more convenient, so there is a great upsurge in learning cantonese. and some company make “can speak cantonese” to be the priority condition to candidates. the cantonese has so many incommensurable advantages; it has longer history than mandarins that also keep many old chinese in it. for example: weiba----wei (tail), zhidao—zhi(understand), naodai----tou(head) and so on. the cantonese also accept many loanwords as we know the lingnan culture has a strong compatibility, for example: little car—taxi, shirt—t-shirt, passenger car---bus which cannot appear in the mandarins. and it is also funny, and special.

cantonese, the local people named it baihua, it is the one of the seven dialects (northern dialects, wu dialects, xiang dialects, yue dialects, min dialects, ke dialects and gan dialects) which is most characteristic. it is not proper to say the guangzhou dialect is the cantonese for they are the other dialect such as ke dialect, chaozhou dialect and taishan dialect, but only the guangzhou dialect (baihua) can be the representation of the cantonese for above 70 million people (5% of chinese) all over the world use it. cantonese is the maternal language for most of cantonese, hong kong people, macao people and resident chinese, it used in pearl river delta with the guangzhou to be the center, the middle area and southwest area of guangdong, southeast of guangxi, hong kong, macao and living organism of resident chinese, the accent of cantonese has a little difference, but has a big difference with mandarins and other dialects, the person cannot understand if he is out of the using area of cantonese.

cantonese originate from old chinese directly, it through the follow dynasties: qing and han dynasties, the cantonese separated from the matrix; wei, jin, and north and south dynasties: it has a explosive growth; tang dynasty, it is maturing; song dynasty, the diverges from cantonese to the dialect in central plains, it is self-contained in substance; yuan, ming and qing dynasties: it has own character and self-contained completely. as the most special dialect, it has three specification: first, it used widely, and more than 70 million person use it; second, it keep the more old chinese than mandarins; third, it has so many delicate written work such as the “paean the cantonese” by zhiyong zhao in 1850s, “princess” by disheng tan in 1950s, all of them can setoff the “peony pavilion” by xianzu tang.