Standard Cantonese

Standard Cantonese is a variant of Cantonese, generally considered the prestige dialect. It is spoken natively in and around the cities of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau in southern China. Standard Cantonese is the official Chinese spoken language of Hong Kong and Macau, and a prestige dialect and lingua franca in Guangdong province and some neighbouring areas. It is also spoken by many overseas Chinese, especially those of Cantonese descent, in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, United States, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere. Traditionally, Cantonese was the lingua franca of overseas Chinese communities in the Western world, although that situation has changed with the increasing importance of Mandarin in the Chinese-speaking world as well as immigration from other provinces.

External Links

• The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect
• Research on Cantonese, HKU