It is the only or major language in forty counties and cities of the province. It is also spoken in sixteen other counties, co-existing with other variants of Chinese. In the neighboring province of Guangxi, it is used in twenty three counties, usually together with other varieties of Chinese. Cantonese is more closely related to Min and Hakka than it is to Mandarin and Wu. Given all the dialects that exist within Cantonese, the language is sometimes referred to as a group of Cantonese dialects, and not just Cantonese.
Oral communication is virtually impossible among speakers of some Cantonese dialects.
For instance, there is as much of a difference between the dialects of Taishan and Nanning as there is between Italian and French. If not otherwise specified, the term Cantonese often refers to the Guangzhou Dialect, which is also spoken in Hong Kong and Macao. Little connects the written and spoken language in a logographic writing system, in which the characters do not directly symbolize the spoken language. Because it is ideographic, speakers of all Chinese languages or dialects, regardless of the mutual intelligibility of the spoken form, can read and understand Chinese writing and literature. Thus, written standard Chinese is the same as written Cantonese for the literate native speaker.