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About the naming discuss

關於命名爭議

The discussions on "Yue Chinese":Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)
對「Yue Chinese」的討論:Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)
Suggestion and Poll:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll
建議與投票:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll
--Syaoranli李小狼 13:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I've corrected the links. It seems that somebody who "invent" the wording "Yue Chinese" wanna stop the discussion from other people, so he/she put everything, included the polling and discussion in progress, inside the so called "Archive"? The "maxim" of that guy, "粵 is "Yue" in normal English usage, so "Yue" is what we need to use", has alreadly shows that he/she's living in a world of illusion(or "Lie without a blink"). We should continue to point out the problem of "Yue Chinese", for preventing its reborn.
我已修正了上方的連結。似乎有些想像出「Yue Chinese」的偉人,企圖透過把正在進行中的討論及投票歸檔,來阻止人們繼續發言吧?那位人兄的『金句』:「在日常英語使用中,我們就是說『Yue』來表示粵,因此我們要用『Yue』」已經顯示出他/她只生活在其思覺世界中(或者是「講大話唔眨眼」)。我們應繼續指出「Yue Chinese」的荒謬之處,慎防它死灰復燃。--Syaoranli李小狼 13:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I wish to see some kind of protection to this page. Or at least we should put a section in Cantonese to issue that "Yue" thing. When Cantonese holds no solid political power in this world and our education system has been mostly controlled by Mandarin, it is vital to setup some protection against such cultural ambush in order to keep the neutrality of Wikipedia. Wikipedia shouldn't be a place to aid such production of false "De facto" status. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chenglap (talkcontribs) 15:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Your political agenda does not belong here. "Yue" (and older "Yüeh") is the form used in the OED, Ethnologue, Ramsey's The languages of China, among other academic and semi-academic books, and is the ISO standard. Wikipedia is to follow reputable sources, not your personal opinion, so "Yue" it is. (This isn't an argument for "Yue" instead of "Cantonese", just that "Yue" is proper English.) kwami (talk) 20:19, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
At the risk of opening myself to a charge of making personal attacks, I think this is the pot calling the kettle black. These often-repeated arguments for Yue seem valid at first reading only because they simply ignore Wikipedia policy. The suspicion must be that the real agenda is to promote the politically charged view that Chinese is a single language, in support presumably of the view that the Chinese are a single people.
That's not to say that we should allow promotion of separatist views here either. It's a very narrow line to walk. And Wikipedia policy has developed as it has in order to best walk just such narrow lines, and should be discarded only after very careful consideration. Andrewa (talk) 02:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how thick is the OED you've checked, kwami. As I've check through several common dictionaries in my library (Oxford Advanced Learners, MacMillan, Longman dictionary of contempopary English, Cobuilt), I cannot find "Yue" in anyone. I think that anyone with commonsense could tell "Cantonese" is a common English term but "Yue" is not. It is just a term used in specified and limited areas.--Fongyun (talk) 04:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you completely: "Cantonese" is much more common in English than "Yue". However, it is the case with a lot of languages that a rare word is used as an article title, because the concept is rare in English. I'm sure that if you looked up the names of all 6000 of the world's languages in your dictionaries, you'd find very few of them. That doesn't mean they're illegitimate. In this case, it's rare to distinguish between Yueyu and Yuehai in English. If we can make the name "Cantonese" work for Yueyu, great. But that doesn't make "Yue" wrong.
What I was trying to demonstrate above was that *when* we use the term Yueyu, even if just an alternate name in the lede, its proper English form is "Yue". ("Yuet" is also found, but is even rarer.) This was in response to the editors who insisted above that "Yue" should be verboten because it's a Mandarin rather than Cantonese spelling. One editor went on an edit-warring spree, repeatedly deleting all instances of "Yue", saying the word was a "violation" of the Cantonese people. Such nationalist passion is not what we should be basing our content on. I've demonstrated that "Yue" is an alternate name for "Cantonese" in the broad sense, used in academia and computer coding, and so it is entirely appropriate to at least mention that fact in the article. My argument is not with you, or whether we should use the colloquial or academic term, but with people who would censor an encyclopedia to fit their political agenda. kwami (talk) 08:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Please don't accuse other as nationalist if there is no evidence to prove other's political view, you should assume others' advices are based on good intention. The NPOV policy page clearly stated how we should name this article and please don't ignore it. It is quite obvious that it is not common English name nor autonym, "alternative name" simply not a valid argument to rename the article.
You changed name of a language without discussion, you should aware that it is very likely to inspire the emotion of people who speak that language. Especially when you're installing some "proper" uncommon name to overwrite the common name.
Frankly speaking, you're trying to "correct" everyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chenglap (talkcontribs) 2008-11-26T14:59:44
Chenglap - there actually was discussion for the last name change. But apparently there wasn't enough discussion because disagreements and opposition sprung up after the page moves. And kwami - this is completely irrelevant, but I think the term you're looking for is "ethnocentrist", not "nationalist". :P Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
The Ethnologue is a Christian organization with the goal of making the Bible accessible in other languages. Although many people cite this source to the extent that it has become a pseudo academic work, it hardly meets the standards of a true academic work. People cite it because there's nothing else, not because the Ethnologue is actually academically rigorous, much less knowledgeable of how to be apolitical. 98.210.57.40 (talk) 07:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)



L31 G0NG L41: In fact, "Yue 粤" is the short term for Guangdong province. Nothing More. And as "Cantonese" generally refers to "Standard Cantonese" or the Dialect of what was once considered to be official language of the Guangdong Government seat in the days before Mandarin Standardization, and as its the dialect spoken in the Five Rams' City of what is now Guangzhou, capital city of Canton, the term "Cantonese" in fact refers to the "official" dialect of "Yue/Canton" province.

however, for Linguistics sake, we use the term "Yue Language 粤语" to differentiate between the Standard Cantonese "Official" Dialect of Canton, and the many other dialects in Canton, such as the Kejia language and the Chaoshan language, both of which are also "Cantonese" languages, and are locally spoken and referrred to as Cantonese Languages "广东话".

And as the local people refer to all Cantonese dialects as 广东话, they differentiate between the standard dialect of the province, Hong Kong, and Macau, by referring to the Language as Yue Language 粤语 or Guangzhou Language 广州话.

So, to clarify, Yue Language 粤语 is synonymous with Guangzhou language 广州话 (and subsequently Hong Kong Language); - and Guangzhou Language 广州话 and Chaoshan Language 潮汕话 are both Cantonese language 广东话

The term "Yue Language 粤语" is a way of differentiating the main "Standard" dialect in Canton in use in the capital Guangzhou, from other Cantonese Dialects, both in English and Chinese.--L31 G0NG L41 (talk) 08:58, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is no "Kejia language" nor "Chaoshan language" in the world. In English those two languages have their own proper name "Hakka" and "Teochew".
Yue is not only the short term for Guangdong province. In ancient China Yue was the proper name for Yue peoples in Southern China and places where they lived. Lingnan, including Guangdong, Guangxi and northern Vietnam, was called Nam Viet (Nan Yue). Even in late Qing period, Lingnan were still called Liang Yue ("two Yues" or "two Viets"). It is only in modern decades that the character "粵" (Yue or Viet) be specificly used as the short term for Guangdong province. As the name for the Cantonese language, the etymology of "粵語" is surely from Nan Yue, the ancient meaning of this character. It is not from modern meaning of Guangdong province, since many Cantonese speakers live in Guangxi, some even live in northern Vietnam for hundreds of years. Other languages in Guangdong province, such as Hakka and Teochew are not Cantonese at all. Hakka is an independent language. It is parallel to Cantonese. Teochew is a dialect of Minnan language.--Newzebras (talk) 18:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Surely the people from Guangxi call their speech Guangxihua, even though it may be Guangzhouhua with a thick heavy accent. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 01:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Hakkawa and Teowchiuwei are both a Guangdonghua, as both sets of people live in Guangdong. However they are not Guangzhouhua, which has been precisely defined to be something else. Neither are Hakkawa and Teoechiuwei ever refered to as Yuehua or Yueyu. Yue is the language used in Yue opera. Yue opera uses formal Chinese pronounced in Guangzhou speech and not for example Toisanwa. It is the equivalent of saying, we speak British. British in this case will include Welsh, Gaelic, Scots as well as modern English, and not just modern English. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 02:10, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Discuss anew

Alright now that the article has been moved back to its long-standing name, let's discuss whether or not this really is the best name for the article. I am opened to either the current name or a form of "Cantonese (XXX)", or some variation of "Yue". First thing I want to bring up is, should the current article name serve as a disambiguation page? Right now we have a Cantonese (disambiguation), and from what I can tell, "Cantonese" served as the disambig page until a page move two months ago (I actually missed this when I started the poll). However, note that if we decide to use "Cantonese" as the disambig page, we have to simultaneously decide on a new name for this article. "Cantonese (linguistics)" comes to mind - it is neutral with respect to the language vs. dialect argument. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The "(linguistics)" tag has been decided against in the context of all Chinese lects. As one editor put it, "Cantonese (linguistics)" should have something to do with Cantonese linguistics. This is a language article, which isn't the same thing. I don't care too much whether the name is based on colloquial Cantonese or academic Yue, but not "(linguistics)"! kwami (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Latest move

Just to say that while my first reaction to the move from Yue Chinese to Cantonese was that it was premature, on reflection I think it was a good idea. The new name has some issues but the old one had major issues, and we'd had plenty of discussion to solve them if they'd been solvable.


The new name is acceptable provided the focus of the article is broadened a little, see below, in fact it may even be optimum. Andrewa (talk) 02:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

L31 G0NG L41

Yue is simply a shortened term for guangdong
if anything, it should be termed "Guangdong Languages" or "Languages of Guangdong"
there is no sense in using the term "Yue"
there is anotehr section already entitled "Standard Cantonese" which could also be termed "The Yue Language"
but this article states "Cantonese" and discusses the various Dialects of Cantonese, which are not termed as "Yue" by foreigners nor by Chinese.
thus the term "Yue" for this article is wholly wrong.
and either "Cantonese" or "Guangdong Languages" fit appropriately
--L31 G0NG L41 (talk) 09:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Yueyu is the literary term for Standard Guangzhouhua. Taishanese etc do not call their speeches Yueyu. They call their speeches 'Punti' in their own pronunciation. 'Punti' simply means 'of this land' or 'local', so it is a meaningless term as everyone is a 'Punti' of somewhere. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 01:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
In English, "Yue" includes both Cantonese and Taishanese. That's what matters. kwami (talk) 01:51, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Where's your reliable reference? I doubt very much English people can even pronounce the word 'Yue' correctly. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 18:20, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Actually 'Yue' is not an English word. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 01:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Article focus

As the article is now simply called Cantonese, its focus should reflect the title.

Basically, the current lead is about the major, high-level branch of Chinese. But it's been suggested that the term Cantonese can also refer to a smaller division, described by the article now at Standard Cantonese.

This is not a matter of article content, just of focus. I'd suggest that both meanings should be mentioned in the lead sentence.

The bulk of the article will still be about the major division, which doesn't need a separate article.

Just one section should give an outline of the smaller division that also goes by this name, probably just its various names and the fact that it's the prestige dialect. This section should have a {{main}} template pointing to Standard Cantonese as its very top line.

And this section should probably be the very first headed section in the article.

Comments? Andrewa (talk) 02:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Rephrasing of the lead

OK, in that nobody speaks I've made a start. Please note that so far it is just a rephrasing and reordering by a native English speaker with some linguistic training but no great knowledge in this particular subject area.

So, if I've introduced any inaccuracies, they were there already. And I may well have done so. I found the existing lead highly confusing, and often I had little idea what was meant by the existing text.

It's just a start, much more needs to be done even if I've got this much right... which I doubt. Andrewa (talk) 03:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of article focus, I am also confused. Is the current article meant to be read by linguists or is it meant to be read by ordinary people? Suppose the latter. Then I'm afraid the problem with the lead is entangled with the article title itself. The article, in its current form, advocates a view that "Cantonese ... is a primary branch of Chinese", which is very misleading, for two reasons.
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, so none of our content should be misleading to non-specialists. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
(1) This implies that all Chinese languages have the same root, but Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghaiese etc. are actually different languages that have been co-evolving under a grand cultural and political roof. Owing to migrations of people across ancient China, these languages have imported features from the others. So they look more similar nowadays. For convenience of research and learning, I have no problem with the linguists' classification of them as branches of a macro language, but pretending that this hierachical model represents historical facts is another matter.
(2) This implies that the languages/dialects within the same "Cantonese" branch are similar. This may be true among Min Nan language and the so-called Standard Cantonese (my native tounge), but Chaozhou language, Standard Cantonese and the villagers' languages (圍頭話) that are spoken in the rural area of Hong Kong are vastly different and I doubt if they can be covered by a single umbrella.
However, the major problem with the article's title and the lead is that it attempts to deviate from the de facto usage of the term "Cantonese". That is why the "Yue Chinese" title had stirred so much discussion. And I will bet that many are still feeling unsatisfied at the current title "Cantonese". No one, except perhaps a few linguists, would use this word alone to refer to the Cantonese collection of languages.
There are some sweeping claims here... evidence?
I doubt everyone will ever be completely satisfied. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
"No one" of course doesn't mean literally no one but a statistical minority. I am unable to conduct an extensive survey to prove my claim, but it is easy to disprove it if one can find a significant number of textbooks which are entitled "Cantonese" but actually teach, for example, Taishanese. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
I think we should change the title of "Cantonese" to "Cantonese dialect/language collection" (note: it is "collection", not "family" because not all Cantonese languages/dialects are related to each other) and change "Standard Cantonese" back to "Cantonese". As for the lead paragraph, we can simply rewrite it as something like this:
The term "Cantonese" (粵語; (jyutping) Jyut6 Jyu5, (Yale) Yuht Yúh) usually refers to the language/dialect that is primarily spoken by the people of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, but the Cantonese people actually are not a single nation and they speak different languages or dialects. The suffocated (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
That lede belongs at Standard Cantonese, not here. Also, your claim that not all Cantonese lects are related required a source. kwami (talk) 09:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
I asked the others to clarify the target audience of the article, explained that the merely rewriting the lead is not enough because the problem is deeper than it appeared, and gave an example to rewrite the lead. All these are about the article in question, not the "Standard Cantonese" article. I was not precise. I mean my suggested lead first clarifies the usage of the term "Cantonese" and the article can go on to introduce the collection of Cantonese languages/dialect.
As to the lack of relations between several Cantonese languages/dialects, why should I quote a source? I haven't written this into a Wikipedia entry in the first place. Isn't it the one who claims that "Cantonese ... is a primary branch of Chinese" responsible to back up his/her claim? Is this view accepted only a few linguists or a generally accepted one? It is the current article's content that lacks supporting evidences.
Very good point. Hopefully, there won't be much trouble sourcing this claim... Maybe even the Ethnologue? If it turns out that even this claim is controversial, then that's a whole new ball park. I'm skeptical, but the request for sources is a good one. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
(The web edition of) Ethnologue only gives a classification but not the rationale behind such classification.
And one clarification: Surely the Chinese languages are related to each other in the sense that there have mutual influences. What I mean is I doubt that they have a common origin. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
By the way, if you want to support this claim, what source would you refer to? A linguist's work? This goes back to my original question. Is this article meant to be read by linguists? I have no problem if this is the case, but the article title should reflect this. In the previous discussion of the title "Yue Chinese", someone proposed the title "Cantonese (linguistics)". Regardless of whether this is the best title, it at least shows the proposer's intent very well.
I will not elaborate further as your comment is irrelevant to the current discussion on the article's focus and lead.The suffocated (talk) 10:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
We need to adjust our coverage for our intended audience, and you're of course correct that we need to make it accessible. However, when finding sources for our claims, they need to be reliable, so yes, linguistic sources regardless of the audience that we target by our choice of wording. The whole article is poorly written and under referenced, but refs are especially required when something is likely to be challenged. Cantonese as a primary branch of Chinese is common knowledge (perhaps Chinese > Cantonese-Pinghwa > Cantonese), but I would certainly challenge a claim that it is not a valid group. It may be true, but something that goes against standard refs would certainly need justification. kwami (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Whether the burden of proof should be rest on the writer or the challenger is an interesting question. My view is that the writer is at least obliged to produce some proof. For the claim that Cantonese is a "branch" of Chinese, the hierarchy you mentioned is simply a membership relationship. In this case the claim is certainly true, but calling Cantonese a member or a subcollection rather than a branch of Chinese languages is more precise. However, if by "branch" one means a branch of a root spoken language from which all present spoken Chinese languages originate, I have yet to see what this root language is. That ancient Chinese spoke sufficiently different languages is clearly documented. The most cited example is the story 越人歌 ("The Yue's Song"; the "Yue" here means 百越, not 粵; some argue that the story is the earliest Chinese literature that mentions homosexuality, but that's another topic), which is generally believed to be written no later than the Warring States Period. 越人歌 explicitly states that the Yue song needs to be translated into the Chu language in order for the king of Chu to understand. If one claims that a root language existed before the Spring and Autumn Period, such claim would be unfalsifiable and hence meaningless.
I agree that one should cite linguistic sources, but linguistic viewpoints should not be taken as guiding principles because they only present certain aspects of the whole picture. For instance, Cantonese is a Chinese language and Vietnamese is not (although the latter is spoken by some people in China), but the similarities between Vietnamese and Cantonese are perhaps much stronger than those between Cantonese and some other Chinese languages. Putting too much emphases on linguists' classification (not to say there may be no agreed classification) would only distort the true picture.The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
It is true that both Cantonese and Vietnamese preserve readings/pronunciations of characters that are in most cases much closer to Late Middle Chinese (Tang Dynasty) pronunciations than modern Standard Mandarin is. But pronunciation is just one issue; grammar and syntax are other important ones, and the substratum in both languages of the autochthonous Tai ethnolinguistic groups that made up the majority populations prior to sinicization of these southern regions shouldn't be ignored either. Badagnani (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
The term 百越 (in English Wikipedia as Yue peoples) was a geographical and ethnological term, including area as north as Shanghai and as south as nowadays northern or central Vietnam. The classification of Vietnamese language is disputed (though many people considered it a Mon-Khmer language).In my opinion only loanwords from Vietnamese are of Chinese origin, not their grammar nor language structure. Cantonese is undoubtedly a Sinitic language, but Cantonese contains hundreds of words which are Tai origin, and Tai has little relations with Mon-Khmer. -- Hello World! 15:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

To address Andrewa's two concerns above -

(1) The issue of whether or not Cantonese and the other language groups have the same roots, to me, fits into the context of the larger problem that this article is barely sourced at all for the amount of content it contains. Having said that, I don't see where the article states that Cantonese and other Chinese language groups branched off from one singular language.
(2) Reliable sources are not difficult to find for which dialects are categorised under the Cantonese group, but I don't see where the article actually discusses the similarities and differences between the dialects within the Cantonese group. I'm not sure how this is actually a problem for the article. If it ever gets expanded and goes into details about the similarities and differences between the dialects, then we should be careful to use sourced information. And as a side-note, the Chaozhou dialect is actually not in the Cantonese group, it is a Minnan dialect. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:06, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
(1) The article does not explicitly say so, but it does imply this. In the paragraph preceding the section Relation to Classical Chinese: "This can be partly explained by their common descent from Middle Chinese (spoken), still with its different dialects." Following this logic, all human languages shall be somewhat similar, as our ancestors all came from Africa.
(2) This is where confusion arises and why the article needs a clearer focus. If you are talking about the major languages/dialects spoken by the people in the Guangdong area, then Chaozhou (and even Min Nan) certainly counts; if you are talking about linguistics, it's a different matter. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Agree 100% about sourcing.
It's an appallingly bad article on that and many other grounds. I doubt any native English speaker would consider it credible as it stands. It has internal inconsitencies, illogical structure and peculiar phrasing. My overall impression is that I can't trust anything it says, because at least some of those who wrote it had such a poor grasp of English that they may well have said the negative of what they intended on occasions. Anyone with experience in language learning has stories of such confusion, and that's exactly the way this reads to me. Sorry if that's a bit harsh!
And please, that's not to say that those with poor English can't contribute to English Wikipedia. Their contributions are valuable and valued. But obviously they must do so as part of a team. That's what collaboration is all about.
It's an important article IMO. Interesting that it's a featured article in another Wikipedia... do we know which one? Andrewa (talk) 04:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
None of them, AFAIK. kwami (talk) 08:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, reading the box at the top of this talk page a little more carefully, it's not stated but clearly implied that this was a featured article on Cantonese Wikipedia. Andrewa (talk) 11:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
And following the recent changes to the FAOL template it's now explicitly stated that this has been a featured article in Cantonese Wikipedia. Is this true? Andrewa (talk) 00:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Apparently an oversight at wiki-yue. Said to be FA on the talk page, and also listed as an FA at the main wiki-yue FA] page. The Chinese history article likewise was missing a star. I've "fixed" both; if they're reverted, that will tell us I misunderstood. (I don't read Cantonese.) kwami (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
The lead in this article is totally confusing. 'Cantonese' is an English word. The only language referred to as 'Cantonese' in English is the main local Chinese language of Hong Kong. This Cantonese language in Hong Kong is essentially identical to the Cantonese language of Guangzhou (called Canton in English) the provincial capital of Guangdong Province (also called Canton in English). None of the other so called 'Yue' languages (Toisan, Sey-Hup, etc) are called 'Cantonese' in English or in Guangdong Province (otherwise why would they be called Toisanwa, Seyhupwa, etc). 86.136.61.102 (talk) 22:33, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation Text

Looking at the start of the article, I noticed the disambiguation blurb at the top that says:

For the common meaning of Cantonese, see Standard Cantonese.
For other uses, see Cantonese (disambiguation).

IMO, for the common meaning seems rather strange. A reader is likely to wonder why the common meaning is not the subject of the article they are reading; therefore, this stands a good chance of creating confusion. I think this should be rephrased for clarity, maybe to something like, "For the dialect of Cantonese commonly referred to by that name, see Standard Cantonese."

Overall, I think this stems back to the old debate over Yue Chinese vs. Cantonese. Personally, I would support using Yue for this article's title (as it is the proper linguistic name in English) and making Cantonese a disambiguation page. But it may be that I'm beating a dead horse with this, so if most of you are satisfied with the current title, then there shouldn't be an argument. Still, it should be made clearer.The Fiddly Leprechaun (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

1) Done. 2) I agree. You might want to start a poll on moving the article. There will likely be a dispute between those of us who want 'Cantonese' to be a dab because it's ambiguous, and nationalist editors who won't accept the normal English convention of using a Mandarin spelling for their language, as well as those who think 'Yue' is too obscure to be used (though 'Wu', 'Min', 'Gan', 'Xiang', and 'Pinghua' are good enough for those articles). kwami (talk) 21:04, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I just cleaned up the start of the article with template. It used to start with Yue 粵語 and say it is also known as Guangdong hua 廣東話. This sentence is now reversed. By far the more common term is 廣東話. Yue 粵語 should be the one that follows. It has far less direct usage. Benjwong (talk) 02:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Started a poll below on the move. Also, Benjwong's edit to the infoboxes was good, as we should have the native name of the language listed first.The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 16:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested move - 2008

new population fig.

IP 98.210.57.40 changed the population figure to 105M. It did the same at Standard Cantonese, but with a different ref. They can't both be right. The latter is accessible at Google books, and, unless I missed it, it does not support the 105M figure. That makes me suspicious that the ref for this article may also be invalid. kwami (talk) 09:37, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Need Cantonese hanzi

Need Cantonese hanzi at Kaffir lime. Badagnani (talk) 04:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I have redirected it to category:Cantonese. 218.103.199.51 (talk) 00:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

ISO 639

As I understand it zh, zho zhi do not apply to Cantonese? Rich Farmbrough, 10:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC).

They should. zh and zho are both "Chinese".[1] There is no zhi, unless you meant chi? kwami (talk) 12:23, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


Origins of Cantonese

All Chinese Dialects are related, Japanese and Korean also Stem from Chinese

All Chinese dialects share the same Characters, though sometimes the grammar maybe changed around (i.e. translation from one to the other is not as simple as simply transcribing the writing)

but they are undoubtedly all from one common origin.

the General concensus is that the original language was altered into different dialects due to time and distance and primitive communication methods.

However, Chinese was at one time so enourmously complex that it makes todays most difficult Chinese dialects look simple. the role of conquering emporers took its toll on the languages, and many characters were forbidden, or deemed uncesessary or too cumbersone and were removed or banned.

the individual cultures of the people were so different and distinct that the languages began to difer in language patterns, grammar, usage, and colloquialisms

Chinese societies are built to protect their members and families, and schools of though of their masters/ leaders/ elders, which makes the division between one society and another society very deep and mysterious, and interactions with outside influences are limited, and the culture fiercely protected.

Modern Marndarin is actually not a language at all, its an invention, a standardization taken from an actual norther dialect of Chinese and transformed to fit into a set of simple rules guided by pinyin. The language was changed in order to make it fit the pinyin, in fact.

the Original Capital of China was in Middle China, and the original inhabitants of Middle China were not Northern People, but were the Southern people. As people immigrated from the North to the Capital, the original people moved South, to what is Souther China, including Guangdong.

and the Original Chinese dialect was something very similar to Cantonese, as of all the Chinese dialects, Cantonese is perhaps the most complex in Grammar, Form, Meaning, and Function.

it is a Language which is probably one of the most powerful Languages on the Earth today, in that its meaning transcends its structure and use, and the cultural depth and bredth which most of what is sad spans is very amazing in its scope, even more deep and powerful than what is found in Greek and Latin

and the Northern Dialects lack any of this complexity and scope and can not have in anyway been a more orignal language as nothing so simple could have ever parented the Cantonese Language. The Cantonese Language, on the other hand, has enough breadth and depth and scope to cover and encompass most other dialects in China, and is without a doubt a far more ancient, more unchanged, and more the original Chinese dialect than is found anywhere else in China.

Thus, the fact that the original Chinese language is actually Cantonese, or a very close relative of Cantonese is Highly Likely. The Original Chinese Dialect left the Original Capital of the Middle Kingdom and moved south as others with Norther Dialects moved down and into the Capital. --L31 G0NG L41 (talk) 09:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Middle China (you probably meant what is today's central China) was inhabited by the ancestors of today's Hakka people. Mandarin is not actually a spoken language of the common people, but the formal written language of officialdom. The official spoken language of China now is actually Putonghua,not Mandarin. The subtle difference between Mandarin and Putonghua is that although Putonghua retains the pronunciation of the Chinese characters as in Mandarin (with small variations), which can now be represented by Hanyu Pinyin, Putonghua is a vernacular language, and it is written as it is spoken, unlike Mandarin in which the vernacular is transcribed into the formal written style. The Hanyu Pinyin system of Putonghua is done with a Beijing accent. Thus Standard Putonghua is often called Beijing speech (although it is not to be confused with the Beijing local speech, which differs from standard Putonghua). Other areas speak Putonghua with various accents, and these are still Putonghua, just not standard Putonghua.[Special:Contributions/86.137.251.212|86.137.251.212]] (talk) 01:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't know who this L31 G0NG L41 plonker is. Japanese and Korean do not stem from Chinese. Japanese and Korean languages do not even belong to the same family as the Sinitic languages. They have only borrowed heavily from Chinese vocabulary. In Japanese many of the Chinese characters used do not even mean the same thing as in the original Chinese. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 01:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Rules for classification

The main page reads "...Cantonese is considered to be a dialect of a single Chinese language for ethnic and cultural reasons, but is also considered a language in its own right because it is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese..." Every single word of this, literally every single word, deserves a comment or two, "in its own right", of course.

a.) Notice the careful phrasing of the words "...Cantonese is considered..."; Well, Red can be "considered" to be Blue (same as "Define: One equals Zero"). Such is the logic of reasoning.
b.) Also take special note of the term "...mutually unintelligible...". Imagine grouping all mutually unintelligible languages currently spoken in the USA into one single "linguistic family" of Americanese, how would one feel? The classification for "a single Chinese language" confers precisely such a weird feeling, hair-raising eye-popping.
c.) Face it (like the main page on the Vietnamese language) this one on the Cantonese language sounds like a joke. It does sound like a joke because it is exactly that, a joke, and a bad one at it with nothing to laugh about. Since when are languages classified, "...for ethnic and cultural reasons...", and not based on linguistic attributes? Since the invention of Wikipedia, perhaps? (Besides, the classification for the Vietnamese language is based on "...geographical reasoning...", apparently. God help Wikipedia.)

Uwe 123.243.142.170 (talk) 01:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)