Yue Chinese


Yue is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.
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, Wuzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect of the group. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen 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.

Terminology

Cantonese is prototypically used in English to refer to the variety of Yue in Guangzhou, but it is also used to refer to Yue as a whole. To avoid confusion, academic texts may refer to the larger branch as "Yue", following the pinyin system based on Standard Chinese, and either restrict "Cantonese" to the Guangzhou variety, or avoid the term altogether, distinguishing Yue from its Guangzhou dialect. Some linguists such as Anne Yue and Norbert Francis designate Yue Chinese itself as a language.
People from Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Cantonese immigrants abroad, generally refer to their language as . In Guangdong and Guangxi, people also use the terms and ; for example, the expression means 'Nanning colloquial speech'.

History

The area of China south of the Nanling Mountains, known as the Lingnan, was originally home to peoples known to the Chinese as the Hundred Yue. Large-scale Han Chinese migration to the area began after the Qin conquest of the region in 214 BC. Successive waves of immigration followed at times of upheaval in Northern and Central China, such as the collapse of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties. The most popular route was via the Xiang River, which the Qin had connected to the Li River by the Lingqu Canal, and then into the valley of the Xi Jiang. A secondary route followed the Gan River and then the Bei Jiang into eastern Guangdong. Yue-speakers were later joined by Hakka speakers following the North River route, and Min speakers arriving by sea.
After the fall of Qin, the Lingnan area was part of the independent state of Nanyue for about a century, before being incorporated into the Han empire in 111 BC. After the Tang dynasty collapsed, much of the area became part of the state of Southern Han, one of the longest-lived states of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, between 917 and 971.
Large waves of Chinese migration throughout succeeding Chinese dynasties assimilated huge numbers of Yue aborigines, with the result that today's Southern Han Chinese Yue-speaking population is descended from both groups. The colloquial layers of Yue varieties contain elements influenced by the Tai languages formerly spoken widely in the area and still spoken by people such as the Zhuang and Dong.

Rise of Cantonese

The port city of Guangzhou lies in the middle of Pearl River Delta, with access to the interior via the Xi, Bei, and Dong rivers, which all converge at the delta. It has been the economic centre of the Lingnan region since Qin times, when it was an important shipbuilding centre. By 660, it was the largest port in China, part of a trade network stretching as far as Arabia. During the Southern Song, it also became the cultural centre of the region. Like many other Chinese varieties it developed a distinct literary layer associated with the local tradition of reading the classics. The Guangzhou dialect was used in the popular Yuè'ōu, Mùyú and Nányīn folksong genres, as well as Cantonese opera, written with Chinese characters extended with a number of colloquial characters for Cantonese words.
Guangzhou became the centre of rapidly expanding foreign trade after the maritime ban was lifted, with the British East India Company establishing a chamber of commerce in the city in 1715. The ancestors of most of the Han Chinese population of Hong Kong came from Guangzhou after the territory was ceded to Britain in 1842. As a result, Hong Kong Cantonese, the most widely spoken language in Hong Kong and Macau, is an offshoot of the Guangzhou dialect. Other migrations of Yue speakers during the nineteenth century, including west along the Guangdong and Guangxi coasts, brought Cantonese and other Yue varieties to southeast Asia. Many went across the Pacific Ocean to North and South America, leading to the historic domination exerted by Yue Chinese varieties in many Chinatowns across the American continent. The popularity of Cantonese-language media, Cantopop and the cinema of Hong Kong has since led to substantial exposure of Cantonese to China and the rest of Asia.
On the mainland, the national policy is to promote Standard Chinese, which is also the medium of instruction in schools. The place of local Cantonese language and culture remains contentious. In 2010, a controversial proposal to switch some programming on Guangzhou local television from Cantonese to Mandarin was abandoned following widespread backlash accompanied by public protests.

Geographic distribution

Yue languages are spoken in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, an area long dominated culturally and economically by the city of Guangzhou at the delta of the Pearl River. Cantonese, also spoken in Hong Kong and Macau, is the prestige variety of Yue. Yue varieties are not totally mutually intelligible with one another.
The influence of Guangzhou has spread westward along the Pearl River system, so that, for example, the speech of the city of Wuzhou some upstream in Guangxi is much more similar to that of Guangzhou than dialects of coastal districts that are closer but separated from the city of Guangzhou by hilly terrain. One of these coastal languages, Taishanese, is the most common Yue variety among overseas communities. However, many such Chinatowns have been historically dominated by varieties closer to a more standard Cantonese; among these are those of Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Vancouver, and London.
Yue Chinese is the most widely spoken local language in Guangdong. Its native speakers constitute around a half of its population. The other half is equally divided between Hakka and Min languages, mostly Teochew, but also Haklau and Leizhounese.
Yue is also the most widespread Sinitic language in Guangxi, spoken by slightly more than a half of its Han population. The other half is almost equally divided between the Southwestern Mandarin, Hakka, and Pinghua; there is also a considerable Xiang-speaking population and a small Hokkien-speaking minority. Yue Chinese is spoken by 35% of the total population of Guangxi, being one of the two largest languages in that province, along with Zhuang.
In China, as of 2004, 60% of all Yue speakers lived in Guangdong, 28.3% lived in Guangxi, and 11.6% lived in Hong Kong.

Varieties

Classification

In Yuan Jiahua's 1962 dialect manual, Yue dialects were divided into five groups:
  • Yuehai, covering the Pearl River Delta and Xi River valley.
  • Seiyap, in the coastal prefecture of Jiangmen to the southwest of Guangzhou.
  • Gao–Lei, in southwestern Guangdong.
  • Hamlim in southern Guangxi.
  • Guinan, in southwestern Guangxi.
In the Language Atlas of China, some varieties spoken in western Guangxi formerly classified as Yue are placed in a separate Pinghua group.
The remaining Yue dialects are divided into seven groups.
Three groups are found in the watershed of the Pearl River:
  • Guangfu includes Cantonese proper, spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as the dialects of surrounding areas in the Pearl River Delta such as Zhongshan, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhuhai and Shenzhen, and in southern parts of the inland prefectures of Zhaoqing and Qingyuan and in parts of Guangxi such as the city of Wuzhou. Almost a half of all Yue speakers speak Guangfu dialects natively.
  • Ngau–Lau dialects are spoken in inland areas of western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi, and include the dialect of Yulin. Ngau–Lau is spoken by 17% of all Yue speakers, with two-thirds of them living in Guangxi and one-third in Guangdong.
  • Yuhng–Cham is spoken mainly in the Yong–Yu–Xun valley in Guangxi, including the provincial capital Nanning. It is spoken by around 7% of Yue speakers.
The remaining four groups are found in coastal areas:
  • Sze-yap or Siyi dialects are spoken in the coastal prefecture of Jiangmen to the southwest of Guangzhou. They include the Taishan variety, also known as Taishanese, which was ubiquitous in American Chinatowns before the 1970s. Sze-yap dialects are spoken by 6.5% of total Yue speakers.
  • Gao–Yang dialects are spoken in areas of southwestern Guangdong such as Yangjiang and Lianjiang. They cover around 11% of all Yue Chinese speakers.
  • Wu–Hua is spoken mainly in western Guangdong around Wuchuan and Huazhou. Native speakers of this variety constitute only 2.1% of all Yue speakers.
  • Qin–Lian dialects are spoken in the southern Guangxi areas of Beihai, Qinzhou and Fangcheng. They are spoken by 6.5% of all Yue speakers.
Anne Yue-Hashimoto has proposed an alternative classification based on a wider sampling of features:
  • Pearl River Delta
  • * Northern
  • ** Sanyi–Zhaoqing: dialects of Foshan and southeast Zhaoqing
  • ** Interior: western part of the Pearl River catchment, including the Atlas's Gou–Lou and southern Pinghua dialects.
  • * Guangfu
  • ** Core: Cantonese proper
  • ** Interior: Gao–Yang dialects of Maoming and the Yong–Xun dialects of Nanning and Guiping.
  • * Southern
  • ** Zhongshan, including Shiqi dialect
  • ** Guan–Lian: dialects of the east delta region as well as the coastal Guangxi dialects classified as Qin–Lian in the Atlas.
  • ** Interior: Huazhou, Wuchuan, Yulin
  • Wuyi–Liangyang
  • * Wuyi
  • ** Xin–En: Xinhui, Taishan, Enping and the neighbouring Doumen District.
  • ** Kai-He: Kaiping and Heshan.
  • * Liangyang: Yangjiang and Yangchun
The Dapeng dialect is a variety displaying features of both Cantonese and Hakka, spoken by 3,000–5,500 people in Dapeng, Shenzhen.