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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 · 23.0°N 113.0°E

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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

MeaningWordRomanization
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

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Vocabulary

Grammar

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

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Glottolog · yuec1235 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · yue