Cantonese
粤语
Cantonese is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Canada, by about 73.1 million people.
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Cantonese keeps all three Middle Chinese stop endings -p, -t, -k: 十 is sap6, 日 jat6, 一 jat1, each clipped short. Counted the traditional way, it has nine tones.
Yue (Cantonese pronunciation: [jyːt̚˨]) is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang).
The term Cantonese is often used to refer to the whole branch, but linguists prefer to reserve the name Cantonese for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect of the group. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese.
Yue languages are not mutually intelligible with each other or with other Chinese languages outside the branch. They are among the most conservative varieties with regard to the final consonants and tonal categories of Middle Chinese, but have lost several distinctions in the initial consonants and medial glides that other Chinese varieties have retained.
From Wikipedia · Yue Chinese · CC BY-SA 4.0
Written down
人人生而平等,喺尊严同埋权利上一律平等。佢哋有理性同埋良心,而且应当以兄弟关系嘅精神相对待。
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).
Words in Cantonese
| Meaning | Word | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| mother | 阿媽 | aa³ maa¹ |
| father | 阿爸 | aa³ baa¹ |
| child | 仔女 | |
| man | 男人 | |
| woman | 女人 | |
| person | 人 | jan⁴ |
| name | 名 | |
| friend | 朋友 | pang⁴ jau⁵ |
| eye | 眼 | ngaan⁵ |
| ear | 耳仔 | ji⁵ zai² |
| nose | 鼻 | bei⁶ |
| tooth | 牙 | ngaa⁴ |
| tongue | 舌頭 | sit⁶ tau⁴ |
| hand | 手 | sau² |
| heart | 心臟 | sam¹ zong⁶ |
| head | 頭 | tau⁴ |
| blood | 血 | hyut³ |
| skin | 皮膚 | pei⁴ fu¹ |
| knee | 膝頭哥 | |
| liver | 肝 | gon¹ |
| water | 水 | seoi² |
| fire | 火 | fo² |
| sun | 太陽 | taai³ joeng⁴ |
| moon | 月亮 | jyut⁶ loeng⁶ |
| star | 星 | sing¹ |
| sky | 天 | tin¹ |
| rain | 雨 | jyu⁵ |
| snow | 雪 | syut³ |
| wind | 風 | fung¹ |
| mountain | 山 | saan¹ |
Most similar languages
Vocabulary
- Hakka ChineseSino-Tibetan33% alike
- Gan ChineseSino-Tibetan29% alike
- Southern PinghuaSino-Tibetan27% alike
- WenzhouSino-Tibetan24% alike
- HainaneseSino-Tibetan23% alike
- Jinyu ChineseSino-Tibetan20% alike
Grammar
- HiligaynonAustronesian81% alike
- Kim MunHmong-Mien80% alike
- Caribbean JavaneseAustronesian80% alike
- Wu ChineseSino-Tibetan80% alike
- Kriang-KhlorAustroasiatic79% alike
- Biao-Jiao MienHmong-Mien79% alike
Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.
Nearby languages
Elsewhere
Glottolog · yuec1235 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · yue