Cantonese (Cantonese Pinyin: jyut6 jyu5 Cantonese), also known as Cantonese and Guangfu Dialect, is commonly known as vernacular, and is called Tang Dialect overseas. It is the tonal language of Sino-Tibetan language family and the mother tongue of Guangfu people of Han nationality. Elegant words, which originated in the ancient Central Plains, have a complete set of nine tones and six tones, perfectly retaining the characteristics of ancient Chinese. It was defined as a language by UNESCO in 2009. It is widely used in China, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hongkong, Macau and Southeast Asia, as well as in Chinese communities in North America, Britain and Australia.
Cantonese is widely popular in overseas Chinese communities such as Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, Sydney, Melbourne, new york, San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto. The number of Cantonese speakers in Guangdong is about 38 million, and the number of Cantonese speakers in the world is about 70 million.
Cantonese definition
Cantonese is a language that originated in the northern Central Plains (the mother tongue of the Han nationality) and spread to Guangdong and Guangxi during the Qin and Han Dynasties. It is also the dominant language in Hong Kong and Macao, which is called vernacular or Cantonese by the people. Cantonese is a kind of tonal language, belonging to Sino-Tibetan language family. It is widely used in China, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hongkong, Macau and Southeast Asia, as well as in Chinese communities in North America, Britain and Australia. Its name comes from the "Nanyue State" in the ancient Lingnan area of China (Hanshu as "Nanyue State").
As early as a few years ago, linguists Ye and Professor Luo Kangning pointed out in their article "The Origin of Cantonese" that Cantonese has nothing to do with the ancient "Hundred Cantonese". It was brought by Han immigrants from the Central Plains, and retained the characteristics of ancient Chinese in the Central Plains, which was preserved, developed and spread abroad in Xijiang region. This sentence is obviously wrong. Cantonese is a language that originated in the northern Central Plains (the mother tongue of the Han nationality), spread to Guangdong and Guangxi during the Qin and Han Dynasties, and merged with the local ancient Vietnamese, that is, ancient Baiyue. Some people think that "Cantonese does retain some elements of ancient Vietnamese, but its main source is ancient Chinese, that is, elegant words". Modern Cantonese retains many elements of ancient Chinese, more of which are elements of ancient South Vietnam. Its main sources are ancient Chinese in the Central Plains and ancient South Vietnamese.
Experts said that "there are many common words that are close to or the same as modern Zhuang language in daily use. Whether these words are the source of ancient Chinese, or the remains of the underlying vocabulary of ancient Baiyue language, or just because other minority languages borrowed these inherent words of ancient Chinese, people think that these underlying vocabulary in Cantonese is the source of ancient Baiyue language, which has not been verified at present. At present, about 20% of these words in Cantonese are not recorded in ancient Chinese literature, and the proportion is small, but they are used frequently. This is not right. Cantonese, commonly known as vernacular and Guangfu dialect, is represented by Guangzhou dialect, which is mainly distributed in central and southwestern Guangdong and parts of southeastern and western Guangxi with a population of more than 50 million. Guangzhou dialect is a dialect with a long history in Chinese, and its formation has gone through a long historical process. According to Mr. Li Xinkui's research, the formation of Cantonese includes five historical levels (Li Xinmei, 1983):
The first historical level is the pre-Qin period. Especially during the Warring States period, a large number of Chu people came to Lingnan and began to spread Chinese on a large scale, which was the initial stage of Cantonese dialect differentiation. Therefore, some words in Chu dialect still remain in Cantonese today. Such as Beginners >; Volume 19 quotes popular saying that "Southern Chu takes beauty as a couple", and Shuowen also says that "she is a good girl". Yan Zhitui refers to "Wa" as "Lovely" in "Yan Family Instructions Zhuyin Poetry", and its sound and meaning are consistent with the "Beauty" in Guangzhou dialect. For example, in Yang Xiong dialect, it is said that "Southern Chu means' Kan', and this Kan means Cantonese [tei35][4].
The second historical level is Qin and Han Dynasties. Cantonese dialect is more influenced by Chinese in the Central Plains, and many features of ancient Baiyue, an indigenous language, are also deposited in Cantonese dialect. Some scholars believe that ancient Baiyue dialect accounts for about 20% of modern Cantonese (Li Jingzhong, 199 1 year). This statistic may not be accurate, but it is an indisputable fact in linguistics that there are many elements of ancient Vietnamese in Cantonese dialect. For example, the entering tone characters in Guangdong dialect are divided into three tones or four tones according to the length of the main vowel, which is very close to the "offspring" of ancient Baiyue language-Zhuang Dong language [4].
The third historical level is in the Jin Dynasty. "Eight Kings Rebellion" and "Five Wild Flowers" occurred in the Central Plains, and a large number of scholars moved south. The Central Plains Chinese they brought has added new influence to the emerging Cantonese, making Cantonese accept more features of Chinese. For example, in the Cantonese dialects of Doumen, Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping and Enping, the nasal initials with the same stop sound are pronounced as [mb, nd, ηg], which reflects the phonetic characteristics of Central Plains Chinese in Wei and Jin Dynasties [4].
The fourth historical level is in the Tang Dynasty. Cantonese has gradually formed an independent dialect with its own relatively independent phonetic system, vocabulary system and grammatical structure. For example, the phonological system of Cantonese today has an extremely strict correspondence with the phonological system of Sui and Tang Dynasties, that is, the prosodic (Middle Ages) phonological system, such as -m, -n and-η in the yang phonological system and -p, -t and -k in the entering phonological system, that is, the phonological characteristics of Cantonese today are very close to those of Chinese in Sui and Tang Dynasties.
The fifth historical level is after the Song Dynasty. Cantonese in Song Dynasty is almost the same as modern Cantonese, and its pronunciation and vocabulary may have laid the foundation for modern Cantonese.