Talk:Cantonese/Archive 4

Requested move 30 July 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. SST flyer  02:20, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Cantonese → Standard Cantonese – requested move to "Standard Cantonese", with "Cantonese" becoming a redirect to "Yue Chinese". It seems like the subject of the article with title "Yue Chinese" is most often referred to as Cantonese, and many editors have added information about the former into this article, which specifies in the lead paragraph that it is about the prestige form of Cantonese. Prisencolin (talk) 22:57, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Not deeply familiar with linguistics but preliminary research seems to suggest this move would go against WP:Common name. The article says Cantonese (presumably referring to the prestige dialect of Yue, not Yue as a whole) is the most spoken variety of Chinese in the Western world. So for the English Wikipedia, the simple title Cantonese seems most appropriate - even if it might also be referring to Yue as a whole - because it's the common name. While there's perhaps inevitable overlap of info between the Cantonese and Yue Chinese articles, this seems to be more of an issue about how to present content, not article titles. So I'm leaning towards oppose, but I'm open to suggestions from people more familiar with the topic. Spellcast (talk) 22:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose While Yue Chinese is most often referred to as Cantonese, the primary use of the word "Cantonese" appears to be the language spoken in Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou/HK/Macau area). Another problem is that few people, if any, use the term "Standard Cantonese". I do recognize the current setup is inconsistent with the Mandarin Chinese vs. Standard Chinese situation, but I think Mandarin is the topic that requires fixing not Cantonese. Timmyshin (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * oppose. There is no formal "Standard Cantonese”, like there is for e.g. Mandarin/Putonghua so calling it that would be inaccurate. It is known overwhelmingly as “Cantonese” the current title. Yes, Cantonese can be used for Yue Chinese but that too is inaccurate, as Yue contains other distinct varieties of Chinese, and the correct name for the group of them (as opposed to one, or thinking of them as one) is Yue.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Would it be okay to remove "Standard Cantonese" from the lead then?--Prisencolin (talk) 21:26, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I would support that. It may be a standard to some people but it’s not normally called that, unlike e.g. Standard Chinese.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:36, 5 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Jootping"
Hey, does nobody else here disprefer this non-English-oriented Jyutping to English-like Yale? For whatever reason (probably you fellow Canto junkies who use that Sheik site, which caused the whole problem with its noncommittal-turned-irreversible selection of the scheme), Jyutping and its idiosyncrasies are spreading all across this English Wikipedia. It really needs to stop. You familiar with it may not immediately realise how much "Yutping" diminishes accessibility to outsiders, in effect creating another IPA (that is, an alphabet that confuses more than helps the public, that only linguists and some students or advocates have any use for, and not always them; certainly not the mass of mildly interested viewers). Apart from numbers, which Yale readily adopts, and which any scheme can use, Jyutping is a less apt form of romanisation for us, except only in one instance of reversing 'eo' and 'oe' (and again, no reason Yale's 'eu' can't be 'ue', or take 'eo'). These 'j', 'c', and 'z' are simply confusing and less accurate -- though I would give them a thumbs-up for the Italian Wikipedia (whose Canto page, incidentally, seems to have inconsistently merged Yale and Jyutping). Can anybody raise their hand if they object to me fixing these here back to Yale? Bravo-Alpha (talk) 09:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Fine by me. People have been doing that for some time. There is no consensus to use Jyutping, and AFAIK Yale is far more common in the lit. — kwami (talk) 11:06, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by outsiders? As if the rest of the word used Latin letters like English does. You're trying to force something because you don't like it, that's inacceptable. All you talk about is how the letters are not pronounced like in English. What about the distracting numbers, the double vowels, the need for spaces or hyphens to make syllable boundaries clear and alphabetical sorting which keeps syllables with same nuclei together. Guangdong Romanization uses b, d, g instead of p, t, k as finals, so the checked tones all come before -i, -n, -o. And the order is bilabial, alveolar, velar. However, IPA is currently the best option. --2.245.127.142 (talk) 11:17, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

No language code?
Is using zh-yue-HK wrong?--88.74.195.222 (talk) 00:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it yue? The Japanese Wikipedia of this page says the ISO 639-3 language code of Cantonese is yue. --Obonggi (talk) 17:43, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

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Most spoken in Western world?
Currently the last sentence in paragraph 2 of the lead says (without citation) that Cantonese is


 * the predominant variety spoken in the Western World, especially in the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.

I know this used to be true, because of former migration being largely from Canton, but can this really be true now, with all the migration from China in general to the West over the past 30 years? Loraof (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * This should probably be removed. The data from the 2016 census in Australia doesn't seem to be out yet, but some short stats seem to suggest that Mandarin has overtaken Cantonese there (not sure about the others). Kdm852 (talk) 02:32, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

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Mandarin
But the government of the PRC does not promote Mandarin, it promotes Putonghua. I suppose most people do not realise Mandarin and Putonghua are different. 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk) 22:51, 6 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I have changed it to Standard Chinese, which is the name of our article and helps clarify its status. Readers can click on the link to that article to find out more about it, such as that it’s based on a dialect of Mandarin and is also known as Putonghua.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:19, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * My change was undone with the edit summary Mandarin is the common English name of the language. But, if that were so, then the article would be at Mandarin, or Mandarin language, and it is not. The article is at Standard Chinese. Chinese as that’s the common name for it – when someone says "I am learning Chinese", or "XXX speaks Chinese" they are referring to this language. Standard to disambiguate it from both other dialects of Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese, and because it is the standard, Putonghua, promoted by the Chinese government. Using "Standard Chinese" is not only correct as the article uses it but it’s correct as it emphasises it’s the standard variety of Chinese that everyone knows as "Chinese".-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 07:23, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It depends on the context. If someone in Hong Kong says they speak Chinese, they are most likely referring to Cantonese. This is borne out in decades of English use by the Hong Kong Government, South China Morning Post, and other reliable sources. Meanwhile, the term "Mandarin" is much less ambiguous in what it is referring to, so I don't agree that changing it to "Standard Chinese" makes anything clearer. It may be the "standard" from a mainland POV, but not necessarily in other Chinese-speaking realms. Citobun (talk) 08:06, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It’s not from a mainland POV, it’s the common usage in English. The use in Hong Kong is deliberately ambiguous - see the section below – so should not be used as a guide. A mainland POV might be just to call it "Chinese", as the government there promotes Putonghua as the only Chinese language, and treats all other varieties as local dialects. Instead it’s better to call it "Standard Chinese". It’s in the China section, so is concerned with the history of Chinese languages there. I don’t know if any other standard for Chinese anywhere. Yes, this article says it is Standard Cantonese but no-one actually promotes Cantonese, the same way Putonghua is promoted on the mainland.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 11:09, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Legal status of Cantonese in China
The Basic Law of HK states that Chinese and English are official languages of HK. However Chinese was not defined, therefore allowing spoken Cantonese to exist as a legal language of HK in a legal loophole. 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk) 22:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * This approach long predates the Basic Law. I mean before 1997 Chinese and English were the official languages of Hong Kong, but exactly what "Chinese" was was not specified. It included spoken Cantonese, written Vernacular Chinese (for e.g. the laws) and written Cantonese (for e.g, records of court cases conducted in Cantonese).
 * I guess they stuck with this approach as it worked well, and easily accommodated Putonghua as an alternative. It also has the advantage of not taking a position on the issue of whether Chinese consists of a number of languages, or is just one language with many dialects.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)


 * It certainly works well given that pre-1997 no HK leader (or people in the media) would speak PTH and PTH was treated as a foreign language by the people of HK, and viewed with suspicion. Nowadays, all HK leaders make their speeches in PTH, and they have to report to the BJ leadership in PTH (not in Cantonese followed by translations/interpretations), and film and TV stars give interviews in PTH (although highly accented). It seems the ability to speak PTH is now a pre-requisit to running for or applying for a government post. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk)

The point is HK Cantonese is an official Chinese language in HK. Other dialects spoken in HK such as Hakka language, Teochiu, even aboriginal HK rural spoken languages are not recognised as "official" Chinese in HK. Of course now PTH is an official language, the other mentioned dialects are not. 109.156.38.168 (talk) 03:54, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The point is, it isn't. sirlanz04:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Urban myth from Xinhai Revolution
The urban myth I heard was that the Hakka language (not Cantonese) just lost out to the then Mandarin language chosen as the national language of China. Hakka was on the table because many of the leaders of the revolution in the south were Hakka people, and Hakka was more geographically diverse than Cantonese. Although of course Hakka could have been confused with Cantonese given that Hakka speakers were also Cantonese speakers. 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk) 23:53, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The only things I know about the choice of Mandarin for the national language I learnt from Wikipedia, so I can’t really comment on such a myth. I would dispute that Hakka speakers are also Cantonese speakers. Though surely true if they were brought up in Hong Kong it is not always the case. The one person of Hakka descent that I knew came to Hong Kong from the UK, spoke Hakka Chinese but did not know any Cantonese when she arrived in Hong Kong, though she quickly picked it up.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 08:19, 7 August 2017 (UTC)


 * It is not very acceptable to draw a conclusion from a sample of one. Even then, Blackburne has confirmed that it is very easy for a Hakka speaker to pick up Cantonese. Hakka speakers in Guangdong generally speak and understand Guangzhouhua, even in the older days, because it was used in schools as a medium of teaching. People in the northern areas of China regarded the Hakka language as a Guangdong language given many Hakkas were from Guangdong. 109.156.38.168 (talk) 03:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was just refuting the claim that "[all] Hakka speakers were also Cantonese speakers". That is probably true if applied only to those from Hong Kong, but there are many more Hakka speakers outside of Hong Kong.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 12:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

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(Cantonese)
(new section) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.182.217.1 (talk) 08:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Substrate
I deleted the section about the “clear” substrate but the bot mistakenly reverted it as vandalism. This section was included by the blocked user bookworm8899/gutmeister (a tai nationalist or at least pushing tai nationalistic POV). Clould someone check the section? There is tai substrate but also Austroasiatic or hmong-mien. I will correct it tomorrow and will include sourc about Austroasiatic and hmong aswell. AmurTiger18 (talk) 18:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Page protection?
Several anon IP addresses/sock puppets have been adding unnecessary info or altering figures from cited sources despite warnings. Should this page be protected from vandalism for a period to prevent the continual edit wars? - Moalli (talk) 05:49, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * [disruptive edit redacted by Nzd   (talk)  17:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)]
 * No, I am not related to any of those users. If you are going to attack users with incivility, it only reflects your true colors and intent on vandalizing this page when the topics you add to the article have already been discussed as having little relevance. Also, since you had the time to go to the talk page, why don't you try this thing called reading, which will explain why your content isn't included in the first place. Also, feel free to go on my personal talk page if you have some childish insults to hurl rather than embarrass yourself publicly on an article's talk page or (hopefully) try to clear this issue in a mature manner. - Moalli (talk) 08:14, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I've put in a protection request. To the IP editor: accusations of sockpuppetry need to be backed up with some kind of proof, otherwise they will be viewed as personal attacks (something you are already guilty of with your other comments), and there are mechanisms in place to report this. With regard to article content, please discuss issues here, rather than edit warring. Nzd   (talk)  17:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I will also say that sharing non-public information about a Wikipedia editor that they have not themselves acknowledged is outing, and is blockable. Please do not do it again (I'm addressing the IP, here, whose edits were removed), or you will be blocked, possibly without warning. Vanamonde (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Also,, I understand that you're being goaded by the IP address here, but please do not respond in kind by calling them a sociopath; that isn't acceptable behavior either. You're in no danger of a block at the moment, but please keep that in mind in the future. Vanamonde (talk) 21:10, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

update need
update need — Preceding unsigned comment added by Obesecisco (talk • contribs) 15:34, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Number of speakers
Despite the figures inserted into this article, it appears there are no sourced figures for the number of speakers of Cantonese, though there are sourced figures for the Yue Chinese dialect group of which it is part. (Some authors call that group "Cantonese", but it's a different topic from this article.) I have therefore added a sourced figure for Yue and removed the Cantonese figure. Kanguole 11:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There is way more than 68 million cantonese speakers. Guangdong province has 110 million population and Guanxi has almost 50 million population and Cantonese is the dominant lingua franca of those two provinces. How can Mandarin be over 900 million and Cantonese be under 100? that's not accurate at all. Cantonese speakers number around 150 to 180 million. Cantonese is the only other Chinese language in China that has "OFFICIAL" status, and I noticed the Wu Group is listed with more speakers, which is even more crazy because that language group has no official status and is so much closer to Beijing, no doubt that the CCP is trying to suppress all other Chinese languages. Hong Kong and Macau are like the New York and Las Vegas of China. Cantonese has so much more clout and power than you think. Plus there's a whole entertainment industry based on Cantonese which is Hong Kong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaywu2000 (talk • contribs) 00:53, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * For information to be included in Wikipedia, it needs to be verifiable, i.e. come from a reliable source, rather than editors' beliefs.
 * There are some sourced figures for the Yue Chinese group as a whole. There may be several reasons why they are less than the total population of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau.  They count the number of people who have a Yue dialect as their first language – the number of second language speakers is a different matter, but would also be of interest if we had reliable sources for it.  Many people in Guangdong and Guangxi have other dialects or languages as their first language, e.g. Min and Hakka in eastern Guangdong, and the recent immigrants have other first languages.
 * Finally, the above is for the Yue group as a whole, including Siyi dialects and others, whereas this article is specifically about the standard variety of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and there appear to to be no sources at all for its number of speakers. Kanguole 09:03, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The edit summary for this edit refers to a census. But Chinese censuses don't ask which variety of Chinese people speak, do they?  Kanguole 07:59, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The URL in the edit summary of this edit is not a reliable source – if fact, it's a composite of old Wikipedia articles. (And even if it were reliable, the figure is for a larger group of dialects, not just Standard Cantonese.)
 * Also, if there is a reliable source, it belongs in the article, not an edit summary. Kanguole 11:39, 27 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Even if it were a reliable source: the estimate of 80 million speakers is for Cantonese "[w]hen classified with other closely related Yuehai dialects", not for Cantonese proper ("the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group", as defined in this article). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:45, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Reporting Jaywu2000's edits
I feel it's time to report Jaywu2000's persistent disruptive edits (cf. their talk page and above), but I don't know where. Is their behaviour edit warring, vandalism or something else by en.WP standards? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * , Kanguole| has raised a post on WP:ANI about Jaywu2000's behaviour. Please feel free to add your comments to the discussion. Blackmane (talk) 04:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

FYI: In their most recent edit on the topic of Cantonese speaker number, Jaywu2000 announced block evasion and called community members "haters," "clowns," and "monkeys." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Number of speakers (again)
In this edit, Jaywu2000 threw in a new source (in the edit summary again) about the population of Cantonese speakers. It cites Ethnologue, which draws from SIL. I've had a brief look around on the Ethnologue site and I think it looks reasonably reliable, but I'm not a great judge on these sorts of things. Also given Jaywu2000's previous attempts at shoehorning changes to the population numbers into the article, it would be worth having some extra eyes on any of their changes. Blackmane (talk) 01:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


 * 73,538,610 wordwide speakers (L1+L2, excluding foreign) is Ethnologue's total for Yue Chinese, not for Yuehai Chinese, let alone for Cantonese proper; see their classification of Chinese languages. If anyone thinks this number is reliable and reflects the current situation they should edit Yue Chinese, not Cantonese. — Altering facts without changing the sources cited in the article is not what Wikipedia users are expected to do. — Population numbers are are population numbers and not speaker numbers. Please note that babies don't master any natural (oral or sign) language, nor do people with certain handicaps. And of course, human populations are not linguistically homogeneous. A lot of investigation is necessary to determine the number of L1, L2, and foreign speakers of a given language, language group or lect. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 06:29, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The latest edit is an improvement than the earlier ones, because it doesn't put a Yue figure in the infobox for Cantonese, and because it attempts to support the figure with a reference in the text. However, Ethnologue is not particularly reliable, and seems to be plain mistaken in this particular case.
 * Ethnologue gives speaker numbers for each country: 62,000,000 for China, 6,662,000 for Hong Kong, and so on down to 5,300 in Surinam, and then adds these up to give the total of 73,136,610 (not 75 million). The 62,000,000 figure for China is attributed to Asher and Moseley 2007, which actually refers to Figure 5.1 in . Figure 5.1 gives counts of all speakers for each the Chinese dialect groups, not just in China.  Indeed the text accompanying the figure says there are 44 million Yue speakers in Guangdong and Guangxi, 6 million in Hong Kong and Macau, and 12 million in southeast Asia and western countries (which adds up to 62 million).  So Ethnologue has counted the speakers outside mainland China twice.  Moreover, that Figure 5.1 also says that speakers of two or three forms of Chinese are counted twice.  So there are two layers of double counting.
 * The addition Cantonese has official status in China under one country, two systems will also be difficult to support – similar claims have been made before (see above), but no-one has managed to prove them.  Kanguole 23:34, 10 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I would be inclined to either 1) remove the claim about the official status or 2) mark it as citation needed until a source is found. I would go for 1 since searching for "status of Cantonese in China" pops this very quote at the top of the search, which is misleading. Blackmane (talk) 03:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I would be inclined to do the former, i.e., remove the claim about the official status. If laws stipulate that Chinese (中文) is official it is not up to Wikipedia users to decide which linguistic varieties are covered by that legal term. This is the job of judges, and it would be embarrassing if en.WP reports something to be the case that court ruling finds to be unfounded. — The situation is similar to that in Germany where it is unclear whether Low German (Niederdeutsch, which is linguistically closer to Dutch than to Standard German) is covered by the legal term German (Deutsch). Some law courts decided it is, others denied that claim. See de:Amtssprachen innerhalb Deutschlands for examples of court rulings concerning the legal status of Low German in Germany. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 07:28, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibilty citation?
Can someone provide references for the assertion that Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible? My university students really debated this point. Smilo Don (talk) 11:56, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

That’s the wrong thing about this article. They are two different languages, not only dialects. --80.210.75.105 (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Cantonese is a language, not a dialect of Mandarin or Chinese
Cantonese and Mandarin are way more different from each other than fx Swedish and Danish are. And all Germanic languages are considered as different languages and not dialects. The same with Spanish and Portuguese. They are 2 different languages with a lot more in common than Mandarin and Cantonese. The whole section of Chinese languages as being one language with different dialects, instead of being same Chinese language family, is considered very political. It’s also differ from other lexicons. Sure you can call it a verity of Chinese. But it’s a language, not a dialect. --Betabobby (talk) 10:10, 4 July 2020 (UTC)


 * There is no universal definition of the term language. One that is often considered humorous is: A language is a dialect with an army and navy. That's why Serbo-Croatian is considered four separate languages in Montenegro's constitution while many mutually unintelligible varieties of continental Westgermanic are conventionally considered to constitute a single German language. See also article Language secessionism. — By purely linguistic criteria, Cantonese and Putonghua are certainly dialects/varieties of separate languages, namely Yue and Mandarin Chinese. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:31, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

West Germanic ain’t considered to be standard a German. You are wrong So what you are saying is that because there are far most Mandarin speakers/editors they are the one to decide that Cantonese is same language as Mandarin, even though other encyclopaedias tells Cantonese is a language. This is totally ridiculous and makes Wikipedia looks even less trustworthy. --Betabobby (talk) 16:47, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * 1. I didn't even mention Standard German. (I am fluent in several continental West Germanic varieties two of which are standardized Ausbausprachen and official languages of the EU. English is also a West Germanic language, but not a continental one.) 2. Nobody is "to decide that Cantonese is same language as Mandarin." And that is exactly the point: It is not up to us to decide questions where sources differ. Much of the controversial discussion is due to an inadequate translation of the term 方言 as "dialect", but problems also arise because the language vs. dialect contrast is often more of a political and sociological nature than determined by purely linguistic data. 3. We are ill-advised to report the obvious rather than what sources agree on. That the Sun revolves around the Earth is something I think I observe every day; it is obvious to me. Yet this is not encyclopaedic knowledge that we should report as a given fact. 4. The lead section should not start with a contentious statement unless absolutely necessary and discussed at the same place. 5. Personally, I consider Cantonese as described in this article neither a dialect of Chinese nor a language. I consider it a dialect (i.e., variety) of Yue Chinese. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

You demonstrate very well what I wrote. What you speak of languages and what you think is right and wrong is unimportant in here. You keep mentioning West Germanic. But the article about is called “West Germanic languages. Not West Germanic varieties. Nobody consider fx Dutch to be a variant of German even that they both belong to same language group or family. It’s a completely different language. The thing is not about calling it language variety, family or group. The problem with this article is it deny Cantonese as a language, even that it’s completely different from Mandarin. The Mandarin or Cantonese definition or translation or language might be different from what a language is in English. But this is unimportant since this article is in en.wikipedia. Besides, Cambridge and Britannica call Cantonese a language. So why shouldn’t wikipedia do that? --Betabobby (talk) 19:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * From what I can tell, the only real reason Cantonese is considered a 'dialect' is the politicisation of the issue by various governments in China who sought to create a stronger sense of national unity, and therefore promoted Mandarin (one of several options) as the 'national language' and relegated all other languages to the status of 'dialect'. I have spoken to a number of linguists on this issue, and while I agree there is no complete consensus, the impression I got is that if the same standards (whatever they may be) that are applied to other language groups were applied to the varieties of Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, etc would be considered 'languages' within a Chinese 'language family'. I would argue that the very fact that they are not mutually intelligible precludes them from being considered dialects of the same language. Even the argument about the common written script only really applies because 'Standard Written Chinese' is the written form of Beijing Mandarin which speakers of other Chinese languages have to learn to code-switch to and from when reading (Cantonese can also be written as it is spoken, but it is one of the only Chinese languages which maintains this capability after the writing system was standardised). Kdm852 (talk) 00:08, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 7 August 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn   Red   Slash  22:44, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Cantonese → Cantonese language – per WP:DISAMBIG; because there's also an ethnic group called 'Cantonese people' that speaks this language. PK2 (talk) 21:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)


 * queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:07, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And then move Cantonese (disambiguation) to Cantonese. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:09, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * With at least 2 previous RMs, this is not an obviously uncontroversial request. User:Station1 (talk) 00:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is the primary topic, so no disambiguation is needed. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:08, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Withdraw I'd like to withdraw this requested move. -- PK2 (talk) 10:48, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 15 August 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved --  JHunterJ (talk) 13:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

– per WP:DISAMBIG and WP:NCL; because the term 'variety' is more neutral than either 'language' or 'dialect' (see here), and because there are also other topics with the respective names 'Cantonese', 'Hokkien', 'Shanghainese' or 'Taishanese' in their titles, such as 'Cantonese people', 'Lingnan architecture' (also known as 'Cantonese architecture'), 'Cantonese cuisine', 'Lingnan culture' (also known as 'Cantonese culture'), 'Cantonese embroidery', 'Cantonese folktales', 'Lingnan garden' (also known as 'Cantonese garden'), 'Cantonese merchants', 'Guangdong music' (also known as 'Cantonese music'), 'Cantonese nationalism', 'Cantonese opera', 'Lingnan penjing' (also known as 'Cantonese penjing'), 'Cantonese poetry', 'Cantopop' (also known as 'Cantonese pop (music)'), 'Cantonese restaurant', 'Cantonese salted fish', 'the Lingnan School' (also known as 'the Cantonese School'), 'Cantonese seafood soup', 'Hokkien architecture', 'Fujian cuisine' (also known as 'Hokkien cuisine'), 'Hokkien culture', 'Hokkien entertainment media', 'Hokkien fried rice', 'Hokkien kinship', 'Hokkien mee' (also known as 'Hokkien noodles)', 'Hokkien opera', 'Hoklo people' (also known as 'Hokkien people'), 'Hokkien pop', 'Shanghai cuisine' (also known as 'Shanghainese cuisine', 'Shanghainese culture'), and 'Taishanese culture'. PK2 (talk) 12:38, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Cantonese → Cantonese variety
 * Cantonese (disambiguation) → Cantonese
 * Hokkien → Hokkien variety
 * Hokkien (disambiguation) → Hokkien
 * Shanghainese → Shanghainese variety
 * Shanghainese (disambiguation) → Shanghainese
 * Taishanese → Taishanese variety


 * Oppose - Reliable sources don't use the word "variety" in the way the proposed page names do, nor does it strike me, a native speaker of English, as normal usage. William Avery (talk) 12:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per common usage and WEASLE. In English, "Hokkien" is almost entirely the language, not the people or the province. Same with Cantonese etc. And "variety" is an inappropriate weasel word. I would support "Hokkien language", also "Cantonese language" for Yuehai, vs "Cantonese dialect" for Guangzhou, but that's not likely to happen. — kwami (talk) 10:12, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This is unrelated, but I like your comment about the weasel-ish character of "variety". FWIW Low German recently has been weaseled to a "variety" in the lead. –Austronesier (talk) 11:11, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Then what do you think of me renaming 'Cantonese', 'Hokkien', 'Shanghainese', and 'Taishanese' to:
 * Option 1 — 'Cantonese lect', 'Hokkien lect', 'Shanghainese lect', and 'Taishanese lect'.
 * Option 2 — 'Cantonese (variety)', 'Hokkien (variety)', 'Shanghainese (variety)', and 'Taishanese (variety)'.
 * Option 3 — 'Cantonese (lect)', 'Hokkien (lect)', 'Shanghainese (lect)', and 'Taishanese (lect)'.
 * Option 4 — Do nothing.
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by PK2 (talk • contribs) 06:46, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Lect" is just as weasely. It says "we don't know or can't agree on what this is". Maybe so, but do we want to make that explicit in the title? — kwami (talk) 21:55, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Then what about the following options:
 * Option 5 — 'Cantonese language variety', 'Hokkien language variety', 'Shanghainese language variety', and 'Taishanese language variety'.
 * Option 6 — 'Cantonese language lect', 'Hokkien language lect', 'Shanghainese language lect', and 'Taishanese language lect'.
 * Option 7 — 'Cantonese linguistic variety', 'Hokkien linguistic variety', 'Shanghainese linguistic variety', and 'Taishanese linguistic variety'.
 * Option 8 — 'Cantonese linguistic lect', 'Hokkien linguistic lect', 'Shanghainese linguistic lect', and 'Taishanese linguistic lect'.
 * Option 9 — 'Cantonese (language variety)', 'Hokkien (language variety)', 'Shanghainese (language variety)', and 'Taishanese (language variety)'.
 * Option 10 — 'Cantonese (language lect)', 'Hokkien (language lect)', 'Shanghainese (language lect)', and 'Taishanese (language lect)'.
 * Option 11 — 'Cantonese (linguistic variety)', 'Hokkien (linguistic variety)', 'Shanghainese (linguistic variety)', and 'Taishanese (linguistic variety)'.
 * Option 12 — 'Cantonese (linguistic lect)', 'Hokkien (linguistic lect)', 'Shanghainese (linguistic lect)', and 'Taishanese (linguistic lect)'. -- PK2 (talk) 05:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Option 4. The primary topic of "Cantonese," "Hokkien," "Shanghainese," and "Taishanese" is clearly the linguistic one, and most users don't even konw that these terms occasionally refer to something else. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 07:35, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above comments by kwami and LiliCharlie. –Austronesier (talk) 11:00, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose the current proposal of using variety as a natural disambiguator. I support bracketed disambiguator like "(language variety)" or something. --Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 17:51, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Common names and primary topics. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:31, 20 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Cantonese (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Yulu Tian.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To add to infobox
Basic information to add to the infobox: the number of native speakers. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)


 * We need a sourced figure for the number of speakers of Cantonese (rather than the whole Yue Chinese group). This has been surprisingly difficult to find. See Talk:Cantonese/Archive 4 and Talk:Cantonese/Archive 4. Kanguole 20:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)