Yue Chinese

Yue
Cantonese
粤语; 粵語 广东话; 廣東話
Yuhtyúh; 'Yue' written in Traditional (left) and Simplified (right) character forms
Region	Guangdong, Guangxi, western Hainan, Hong Kong and Macau
Ethnicity	Cantonese Taishanese
Native speakers	86 million (2022)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Yue
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese Eastern Han Chinese Middle Chinese
Varieties	Yuehai (incl. Cantonese) Siyi (incl. Taishanese) Gao–Yang Yong–Xun Gou–Lou Qin–Lian Wu–Hua Luo–Guang
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yue
Glottolog	yuec1235
Linguasphere	79-AAA-m
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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 varieties are not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Chinese,^[2] and they are not mutually intelligible within the Yue family either.^[3] 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.