Dialect of Yue Chinese
| Taishanese |
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| Native to | China, overseas communities particularly in United States and Canada |
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| Region | Sze Yup, the Pearl River Delta; United States: historic Chinese communities in Chinatown, San Francisco, other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area of California such as in the San Jose and Oakland areas, Chinatown, Boston and nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, and New York City, Seattle, Washington; Canada: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver |
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| ISO 639-3 | – |
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| ISO 639-6 | tisa |
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| Glottolog | tois1237 |
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| Linguasphere | 79-AAA-mbc |
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Taishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 臺山話; pinyin: Táishān huà; Jyutping: toi4 saan1 waa2), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisan-wa, is a Yue Chinese dialect native to Taishan, Guangdong.
Even though they are related, Taishanese has little mutual intelligibility with Cantonese. Taishanese is also spoken throughout Sze Yup (or Siyi in the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese), located on the western fringe of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, China. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, most of the Chinese emigration to North America originated from Sze Yup (which includes Taishan).[1] Thus, up to the mid-20th century, Taishanese was the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.[2]