Talk:Yue Chinese/Archive 1

message: Those are dialects of the Cantonese language. Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong dialects are also dialects of Cantonese.  
  
If you don't feel comfortable with dialects and languages, go with the sub-dialects and dialects pairing.
--Steve   
::Agree. Cantonese is a general term of all dialects of Cantonese language, including Toishanese(台山話/四邑話), Standard Cantonese(廣府話), Pinghua(平話) and other dialects of Cantonese.59.40.41.129 07:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Toishanese

message: This page should be moved to Cantonese Chinese to parallel Mandarin Chinese. Whether Cantonese is a "language" is disputed and not widely accepted. It is best considered a dialect of Chinese. Jiang 23:35 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)
: The inconsistency is bad. I've deleted the "Cantonese Chinese" and you can move now. Take care of other Chinese dialects while you're at it, will ya? --Menchi 23:47 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)
----
=== Revision history ===
"Cantonese Chinese", as a deleted redirect, has the following hist:
* 16:36 29 Jun 2003 . . Jiang (#REDIRECTCantonese language) 
* 16:34 16 Jun 2003 . . Jiang (#REDIRECTCantonese) 
* M 21:49 20 Feb 2003 . . Menchi (#REDIRECT Cantonese)
--Menchi 23:47 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)
----
With Jiang's encouragement, I'd like to hopefully merge the Cantonese page and the Cantonese linguistics page together. Cantonese should be a . . . whateverthingamajiggy page you call a linking page to other pages -- linguistics, Guangdong, cuisine, opera even. . . Zhongyi 02:07, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Move this Page

message: "Cantonese Chinese", as a deleted redirect, has the following hist:
* 16:36 29 Jun 2003 . . Jiang (#REDIRECTCantonese language) 
* 16:34 16 Jun 2003 . . Jiang (#REDIRECTCantonese) 
* M 21:49 20 Feb 2003 . . Menchi (#REDIRECT Cantonese)
--Menchi 23:47 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)
----
With Jiang's encouragement, I'd like to hopefully merge the Cantonese page and the Cantonese linguistics page together. Cantonese should be a . . . whateverthingamajiggy page you call a linking page to other pages -- linguistics, Guangdong, cuisine, opera even. . . Zhongyi 02:07, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision history 

message: It would be great if someone could expand on and explain this sentence in the article - it doesn't mean much to me, not knowing the characters!:
:(Tone 1 and 4 are classified as 平 while the other as 仄.)
Thanks, Enchanter 00:13, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)
: Done. I actually never seen the 仄 character. I had to check Mandarin Dictionary (Chinese only). --Menchi (Talk)?? 00:41, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone 

message: Does the second paragraph imply that the amount of worldwide expatriates who speak Cantonese exceeds that of Mandarin? If not, then 'the' should be changed to 'a', implying that it constitutes a great whole of the total diasporic lingua franca. --Taoster 00:23, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distribution 

message: On the interesting subject of Cantonese 係, the pronunciation given is "hai6" — but is that Pinyin, reflecting what it would sound like in Mandarin, or is it in one of the Cantonese romanization systems, and if so, which? Or does it work either way? I think we need a note to explain. — Hippietrail 08:16, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it isn't in Mandarin. --Menchi 08:19, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  To be 

message: Here's a draft of the article on Written Cantonese that I started: User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese. Feel free to make changees, edits, or improvements on it. It's still far from being a complete article.--Yuje 07:08, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The article structure looks pretty good after a quick cursory view.  I'll have more time to look though it more thoroughly tonight.  Do you mind if I make direct edits in it?  --Umofomia 00:48, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I think the article is already good enough to post in the main article namespace if you want to do that.  That way we can start doing more collaboration on it directly.  --Umofomia 00:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: One more thing... If you do decide to post it in the the main article namespace, I suggest doing an article move rather than copy-paste.  This way the edit history will be preserved. --Umofomia 00:52, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I can't move the page. Currently, Written Cantonese redirects to Cantonese (linguistics). I've posted a request for a move here.  For now, you may make edits directly on the draft page.--Yuje 01:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay... I'm going to start reviewing the article now and make changes as I deem necessary.  I'll post comments on its discussion page.  --Umofomia 06:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Written Cantonese 

message: I would like to recruit a Cantonese speaker or two to answer a simple question at Talk:Kumquat.  I think there is a mistake in the article, but don't know enough Cantonese to be sure.  Your help would be appreciated.  — Pekinensis 21:13, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kumquat 

message: I've submitted Chinese language for Peer Review and there's been a request for samples of pronunciation. There's already a sample of the four tones of Standard Manddarin and we've managed to record our own samples of Standard Mandarin, Beijing dialect and Hangzhou dialect. A fourth sample in Cantonese would just about do it. If there any speakers of Cantonese with proper recording equipment, please check out the talk page for the current samples and the proposed sentence to be used.
Your help will be much appreciated. Peter Isotalo 11:04, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
:I've posted a Cantonese sample there. --Umofomia 06:41, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation samples needed 

message: :A Requested page move was posted to wikipedia:Requested move on  14 Apr 2005.
User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese -> Written Cantonese. The current page is a redirect to Cantonese (linguistics), and I want to move my draft, along with the entire history to the redirect page. --Yuje 01:05, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~    
*Support Keep the page history since more than one person has worked on the draft (so far me and Yuje, but there may be others) and we want to keep the attributions straight.  In addition, this page notes: The "move page" function keeps the entire edit history of the article, before and after the move, in one place, as if the article were always named that way. So, it's preferable to use this method over just cutting text out of one article and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are harder to keep track of it you do that. --Umofomia 08:27, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Add any additional comments
As it is a move of a page from user space into the encyclopaedia, why not just cut and past it? Why do you want to keep the history of a page to date? --Philip Baird Shearer 08:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move [[User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese]] -> [[Written Cantonese]]

message: ::Add any additional comments
As it is a move of a page from user space into the encyclopaedia, why not just cut and past it? Why do you want to keep the history of a page to date? --Philip Baird Shearer 08:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I wonder how reliable the Ethnologue data is. Can we rely on it as a true measure of how many speakers there are, and how did they census the population to achieve those results? Dylanwhs 07:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure about the overall reliability of the data, but at least for the Mandarin statistic (which I assume you're referring to since that was what I cited in the comment of the last edit to the article), it appears to basically match the figures listed by the World Almanac and the CIA World Factbook (see here).  --Umofomia 07:58, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnologue Data 

message: For four weeks, this article began by introducing Cantonese as 廣州話 (Guangzhou dialect), even though both the disambiguation at the top and the rest of the article makes it clear that the Guangzhou dialect is described elsewhere, namely, at Standard Cantonese.
Imagine if something like this had been done for Standard Mandarin. Imagine if Mandarin (linguistics) was introduced as 普通話 (Putonghua) or 北京話 (Beijing dialect). Imagine if Chinese language was introduced this way. (The Chinese language (北京話, or 中文) is the official language of China. It has 4 tones and syllables can end in a vowel, -n, or -ng. Also, final -r is a common suffix.) There would probably be an uproar, especially among Cantonese speakers, and the offending sloppiness would quickly be removed. And yet the Cantonese article is allowed to have this type of sloppiness, which is clearly unfair to the speakers of non-Guangzhou Yue dialects.
The way that I see it, the only way this can be solved is if Cantonese (linguistics) is moved to Yue (linguistics). This will help reinforce the idea that Yue is a category that includes not just Guangzhou dialect, but also the Seiyup dialects, and so forth.
-- ran (talk) 23:57, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
:I've been in favor of such a view all along. It is indeed unfair to other Yue dialects, and would be as if all Wu languages were called Shanghainese. I think the misconception arrises because Cantonese is very commonly called 廣東話, and Standard Cantonese is very often simply labeled as 粵. What's confusing is that Cantonese is being used for various different definitions which differ in breadth. This is my understanding of the situation (from highest to lowest):
*The entire grouping of all Yue dialects, some of which have low levels of mutual intelligibility (粵語?)
*The Cantonese dialect continium (Yuehai?), which are mutually intelligible, but can vary a bit. For example, Zhongshan dialect is quite understandable, but sounds a bit different than Guangzhou (北京 bakgung instead of bakging, I think), and has some different vocabulary. This would be the language spoken in a wide region of Guangdong. (廣東語/Cantonese?)
*The more specific standard used in media and education. The standardized form that the romanization system is based on. Media, news broadcasts, movies, and education would use this. How to explain? My analogy would be the English taught in classroms in the US. The Texan drawl is a regional variation of English, but isn't taught in education or used in dictionary pronuncation guides. For example, certain Cantonese pronuncations, as in English, are regarded as more "proper" than others, (leading to some HK pronuncations being called "lazy speech"). (Standard Cantonese?)
*A very specific regional speech, say the language as spoken only in Canton. (廣州語?)
The English word "Cantonese" seems to be used interchangably with all the above. Maybe an explanation needs to be added to clarify that. My attempts at equating the English names with the Chinese ones are just tentative though. The English definition has never been very clear. Maybe some Siyi speakers might object to their group being excluded from Cantonese and 廣東語.  --Yuje 01:08, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)
:I agree with Yuje. In English the word "Cantonese" is used to things related to Guangdong, the language, the culture, etc. Although in many respects, such as culture, cuisine, language, it does not cover Hakka and Teochew, its usage is not only limited to Guangzhou, which was called Canton. In English "Cantonese" is an all encompassing term to refer to this umbrella of dialects. — Instantnood June 28, 2005 09:00 (UTC)
::the term "Guangdonghua"(Guangdong dialect) is not very precise, I personally believe this term should not be use any more and clarification is needed for non-Chinese readers. Because this term is usually used to describe who you guys call "Standard Cantonese", which is only spoken in the middle part of Guangdong Province. --Eternal 17:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I choose to differ in opinion.  Cantonese is Guangzhou dialect not Guangdong dialect despite the term 廣東話 mentions guangdong.  In Hong Kong and Canton, when people refers to 廣東話 or 粵語, they actually means 廣府話, which refers to Canton, the capital, not Guangdong the province. The English translation (Cantonese) is more accurate than the Chinese usage (廣東話) itself.  It is wrong to lumps all the dialects in guangdong and label them as Cantonese.  The English word "Canton" though sound more like guangdong, it actually means guangzhou, the capital, not the province. Kowloonese 22:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion between Guangzhouhua and Yueyu 

message: This footnote appears in the article:
 It is also suggested that the name Canton is derived from the Latin for "song,"
It sounds like the most unlikely thing in the world to me: if no-one else can verify it then I suggest that it be removed. Jogloran 23:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, this footnote is based on conjecture.  More likely, the english word Canton comes from a "sound alike" translation of the Cantonese name for their homeland. (Sloman 13:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly needs documentation. Sounds almost impossible. --Dpr 13:44, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of 'Canton' 

message: Is Cantonese language replacing the Teochew language and other min-nan languges in Guangdong Province? I heard that the children in Shanwei are no longer speaking their local dialect but speak a creolized form of Cantonese now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sonic99 (talk • contribs) . 16:38, February 19, 2006 (UTC)
For your up-to-date information, Mandarin has already replaced the Shanghainese dialect. Hardly anyone speaks Shanghainese in Shanghai now. Only the older generation Shanghaineses still speak their dialect.KingL 02:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Cantonese language replacing the  Teochew language? 

message: From the article, it says that UH, San Jose State and Brighmam Young offer Cantonese courses. Are there other univerisities? BEcause I really want to study this language, and I want a bigger range of colleges I can choose from. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.216.107.15 (talk • contribs) 21:42, April 12, 2006 (UTC).
: It would be quite a challenge to list ALL university/post secondary institution that offers Cantonese courses. Besides accreditation among these programs are not necessary universally recognised. So there is really no point to list them all. --Kvasir 06:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Universiities offering Cantonese courses 

message: Is the language name "Yueyu" intelligible to Mandarin speakers (i.e. people from Beijing or Shanghai)?  I've always referred to it as "Guangdonghua" when it's come up in conversation and everyone knows what I'm talking about.  But now with this discussion of "Yueyu" (which I haven't heard used to refer to this language in conversation), I wonder if I should be using this term in conversation to more properly refer to the Cantonese language.  Badagnani 16:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although I'm not exactly sure why myself, people tell me that "Yueyu" is the proper name for the Cantonese dialect. The only time I've ever seen it used is occasionally in reference to Cantonese cuisine and in the subtitle option of many movie DVDs. --Mewarmo990 06:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please see the intro in Standard_Cantonese for the distinction between the different names of Cantonese. "Yue" is the traditional "abbreviation" for the province of Guangdong. Sounds silly that a province with a 2-character name needs an abbreviation, but like most other provinces that have abbreviated names they derived from the historical region/country name that once occupied that area. In short, Yue = Guangdong. Therefore the terms means the same thing in conversation. "Yueyu" tends to be the formal term as Mewarmo990 said, more likely to be encountered in writing. Also from my observation, one SPEAKS guangdonghua, but not yueyu. But one can USE either guangdonghua or yueyu. While it's not technically wrong to mix up the terms it just sounds awkward when it is done. Very fine distinction there. --Kvasir 06:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yueyu/Guangdonghua

message: The number of cantonese speakers is 100 million
http://www.oclc.org/languagesets/educational/languages/asia.htm --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.17.101 (talk • contribs) 
:That is not a reliable source, the section under "Difference between Mandarin and Cantonese" is copied from an older version of the wiki articles about Cantonese. The usual accepted number for the Yue group is 60-70 million, c. 6% of  all Han speakers. LDHan 15:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Number of speakers

message: This section added by User:Toubunshin appears to be a mish mash of repeated old myths and stuff that appears to be made up by somebody off the top of their heads, with no references cited. Unless the relevant references can found, I think it needs to be removed or if someone can rescue it, a complete re-write. LDHan 19:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - the tone is inconsistent with that of a proper encyclopedia entry, sources are not cited, there is POV in some areas, and some of is made up of unverifiable rumors. I don't think the section should be removed outright, but someone with more knowledge in this area needs to edit or completely rewrite it. I would, but my knowledge of Cantonese's history is only a little better than the previous editor's. --Mewarmo990 06:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: History of Cantonese

message: There are likely more of them left, but I removed the external link "A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs and City Life" under the "Other Links" category. It was just a link to order a book.  --Mewarmo990 06:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spam link removed

message: Cantonese will always be a prestigious dialect. There are many Cantonese living oversea and the prevalence of Hong Kong's popular culture and movies has spurred some Chinese in other regions to learn Cantonese. Also the fact that in mainland China, Guangdong people are having more children than the northern people. Therefore, the future of Cantonese language and culture will still be dominant. Sonic99 02:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably the biggest threat to the long-term survival of Cantonese came in 1997. I'm sure there are many who fantasize at night about the death of Cantonese, but if it does go extinct, I doubt it'll happen as quickly as Tibetan or Uyghur; Hong Kong by itself outnumbers the entire Tibetan population. Languages die unless they're spoken, and they're not spoken if not percieved as useful or respectable. But I think there's reason to be optimistic: there's a Hong Kong culture producing a thriving Cantonese movie, television, radio, and pop music industry, which is more than can be said for say Shanghainese or Hokkien. (I know of only a single Shanghainese movie, and it was made in Hong Kong) I don't think this culture is popular enough that it would make others want to learn Cantonese, but it would stop or slow down native speakers from losing Cantonese. But I find it understandable why a lot of Taiwanese fear the possible damage to their language and culture if unification happens, and why the independence movement heavily promotes Taiwanese language. --Yuje 08:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Sources, please? ;) Seriously, no sane speaker of any language or dialect will go to that extent in proclaiming his language or dialect as "prestigious" and that its "dominance will still prevail"...unless both are under contestation. Your action actually vindicates the later.--Huaiwei 02:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So cantonese will go the way of Akkadian, Latin,Sumerian etc, as they use to be the lingua franca at some point but are extinct now. Enlil Ninlil 05:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite unlike languages like Latin, however, Cantonese has never been the lingua franca for diverse peoples in any significantly-sized society except those in, or with an ancestry tracing back to the Guangdong region. Still, it will be interesting to see it go the way of Latin. :D--Huaiwei 06:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cantonese is prevalent 

message: Why do fresh off the boat Honger girls don't date western-born Chinese, mainland Chinese and Vietnamese Chinese(Hoa) guys? Can someone tell me why. 69.159.203.22 22:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hay each girl is diffenrent and will date who they want!!!!!!!!!! Some like foregners like my love, and some dont. Enlil Ninlil 05:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The keywords here is not "honger" girl.  The key is in "fresh off the boat".  I'd bet if a fresh off the boat Mexican girl would date someone who can speak Spanish.  Kowloonese 02:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey Kowloonese, he said that Hong Kong girls don't date mainland Chinese and Vietnamese-Chinese. That means they don't like fresh off the boat Guangdong Cantonese men and Cantonese-speaking men from Vietnam. It's not a language barrier. 73.150.235.202 01:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

text: If you want to delete this inappropriate section, ask the Wikipedia Administrator to remove it. Sonic99 02:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hong Kong girls 

message: It looks like a paragraph about Cantonese Romanization is missing (or maybe an article). There is a category :Category:Cantonese (linguistics) romanisation, but no article or anything that I can find in Wikipedia to make sense of the different articles about the topic. Maybe someone who knows the topic could start something? olivier 17:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you could start it with the information from wiki pages and your resources? Enlil Ninlil 05:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am actually wondering why such a summary doesn't seem to exist, while the article seems to be already quite detailed. olivier 08:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just added some relevant Wikilinks in "See also."  See if these have what you need.  Badagnani 09:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. That's a beginning. I guess that a next step will be to compare them, explain where and when each of them is used and why. olivier 09:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Romanization

message: Hello, there's some controversy about the origin of the name saifun to refer to cellophane noodles.  It was earlier thought that this was a Japanese name (i.e. harusame saifun) but it now seems it might be from Chinese, maybe related to the Mandarin "fen si."  Is it possible that "saifun" is a Min Nan pronunciation?  It doesn't seem to be Cantonese.  Thank you, Badagnani 22:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I grew up in Hong Kong.  No one there call that thing saifun.  It is called fun see in Hong Kong.  I later learned that they are also called "細粉" (sai fun in Cantonese pronunication, or xi4 fen3 in Mandarin) in some Mandarin restaurants.  I would say 細粉 is not Cantonese, or at least not HongKongese.  However, saifun may still be a Cantonese pronuciation of a non-Cantonese term.  Kowloonese 02:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Cellophane noodles]] question 

message: Beijing Mandarin pronunciation of wǒ is irregular, ě is expected.
:That's interesting, can anyone explain a bit more? Is it "ě" in other dialects of the Mandarin group (spoken in northern and southwestern China)? Or is it that it should be "ě" according to some theory, but in actual normal speech it's "wo3"? LDHan 16:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's according to the regular sound change from Middle Chinese to Modern Chinese. However, pronouns, particles and adverbs are known to be influenced by things other than regular sound changes.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Changeup (talk • contribs) 15:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to my Chinese dictionary (Far East), ě is listed as an alternate pronunciation. But (rather unhelpfully), it doesn't say where. --Yuje 00:51, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example of 我

message: This edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cantonese_%28linguistics%29&curid=147533&diff=79802330&oldid=78980419 doesn't make for a very attractive page.  Badagnani 06:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite a few users have commented on the unattractiveness of that box. To date, it's only being proselytized by a single, dedicated Wikipedian. --Yuje 10:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New box 

message: I have no idea whether this is due to an elaborate behind-the-scenes mythology to which viewers are not privy, or it's just some closed-caption transcriptionist's idea of a joke, but on closed-captioned American episodes of Teletubbies, Po (the little red one) is said to be "speaking Cantonese" when she talks.  None of the other 'tubbies have their babling mentioned at all in the captioning, though it all sounds the same.  That is just plain weird. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.119.52 (talk • contribs) 
:See  and  Badagnani 23:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Better red and well-fed

message: The box that reads that Cantonese is spoken in: "Southern China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian countries" is stretching it a bit - and last time I looked, The UK, The US, Canada etc are not Asian Countries :) .  I know how it is supposed to be read, but I suggest to clarify things, this should be changed to "Southern China, Hong Kong and Macau" only, as it is the main (or one of the main) languages spoken there.  Any objections?
Taishan Ted sez:
For clarity, one could change "other Asian Countries" to "various Asian countries," or the sentence could be rephrased: "Cantonese is the native language of many Chinese in  Hong Kong, Macau and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. It is spoken by some ethnic Chinese in Asian countries including (but not limited to): Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Cantonese is also commonly spoken by many overseas Chinese living in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand." It's possible to do more to satisfy the pedants, but, after a while, that effort becomes tedious.
Cantonese remains the lingua franca of San Francisco's Chinatown and the Chinese neighborhoods in that city. Cantonese isn't likely to become an extinct language in this century. (That can't happen until the current generation of Cantonese-speaking children have grown old and died.) Mandarin speakers seem to dominate Chinese communities in Silicon Valley and the southern S.F. Bay Area. This old ABC (3rd generation) never heard much Mandarin spoken anywhere in the Bay Area until the 1970s. 
its spoken in the chinatowns there. its definitely not the main languages there, considering the chinese population is under 1% compared to 25% of malaysia.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.14.222 (talk • contribs) 
People in Taiwan (ROC) speak Min Nah and Mandrian, and the majority of Taiwanese do not understand Cantonese at all. You will find more Cantonese speakers in Manchuria than in Taiwan.
And the predominant "sino-Chinese" language in the Phillipines is Min Nan, a variant of Taiwanese-Mandrian and not Cantonese. The most widely spoken Chinese language outside of China is Mandrian, and not Cantonese. Most of the 7 million world wide Cantonese speakers are in 
Hong Kong and Southern China. Mandrian remains the most spoken "sino" language in Asia.
-intranetusa
      
I think you meant 70 million instead of 7 million right? When you say "most widely spoken Chinese language outside of China", do you mean by magnitude alone, or by dispersion? Whatever you are refering to, please cite your resources for our reference, thank you. To give a general idea of how many people speak Cantonese as their mother tongue in North America, the most recent available set of statistics is the 2001 Canadian Census. In which the results were that 322,315 people speak Cantonese and 101,790 speak Mandarin. . I have heard from a few people that the situation "is now changing, and more and more people are speaking Mandarin, and Mandarin is taking over Cantonese overseas". The fact is, this is a place where we base things on facts, not opinions. For now, all we have is the available census data, and until new sets of data are available, it would be irrelevant for people to start stating otherwise.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by Miracleman123 (talk • contribs) 04:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are about 1 million Cantonese speakers in Vietnam. There are also Cantonese speakers in Malaysia and Indonesia. Most of the Filipino-Chinese in the Phillipines, have assimilated and most don't speak Min Nan anymore. They don't even have chinese last names. In Canada, Cantonese is the dominant chinese dialect and in United States, Mandarin is the dominant chinese dialect. Do some research. Sonic99 20:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Spoken in...

message: San Diu people are ethnic mountain chinese who live in Northern Vietnam and they speak an archaic variant of Cantonese. They are believed to have migrated from the Guangdong province in 1600. How close is San Diu dialect to Standard Cantonese? Sonic99 06:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  San Diu Dialect in Vietnam 

message: Welcome, User:221.126.142.153 -- your extensive edits were quite good!  Badagnani 19:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Welcome 

message: This article is excellent but the discussion of Cantonese usage outside of the traditional Cantonese-speaking area shows a heavy bias toward the United States. There is little or no mention of Cantonese in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain et al. This must be a high priority for anyone improving this article. Wikipedia is used the world over and is edited likewise: content biased toward the United States does not place an article in its proper context. (I know too little about Cantonese to add anything myself.)193.61.176.108 13:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More information on Cantonese usage in countries other than the United States needed 

message: Is there a dialect called Kowloonese? (I think it was mentioned in the Wayne's World 2 film with Tia Carrere). Badagnani 01:49, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Kowloon is part of Hong Kong and doesn't have its' own dialect. Enlil Ninlil 04:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A bit more precise: Hong Kong does not have geographical dialects, slangs or languages. I saw Wayne's World too and it was joke were the guy wanted to show of his knowledge.
Yes, but he detected something in her accent that he said showed she was from Kowloon Bay as opposed to Hong Kong proper. Taishanese sounds different than Standard Cantonese, so wouldn't Kowloonese have a slightly different accent? Badagnani 01:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I think when you say "Hong Kong proper", you actually mean HK Island, the whole territory is "Hong Kong". Refering to "Kowloonese" could have been a simple error, but if it was intentional then it was a pretty subtle joke.  There are accents other than the HK standard, but they're in the old villages in the New Territories, and then it's probably only the older generation who'll have it. LDHan 18:32, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kowloonese 

message: Is there any reason why the basic page is titled in this way, and not "Cantonese language", as it is for virtually every other language? Thefamouseccles 01:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Beats me, but we need to chang it, and to stop refering to it as a dialect, thats just crap commie propaganda. Enlil Ninlil 04:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact it's Chinese nationalist propaganda ("nationalist" as in Chinese nationalism, not Guomingdang/KMT). The article already mentions this, Like other major varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is often considered a dialect of a single Chinese language for cultural or nationalistic reasons, though in practice Cantonese, like many other Chinese language varieties, is mutually unintelligible with many other Chinese "dialects". See Identification of the varieties of Chinese. "Cantonese (linguistics)" avoids this issue and is consistent with other Chinese language/dialect wikipedia articles. LDHan 16:50, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

text: The Singapore government similarly considers Mandarin as equal to the Chinese language, and the rest as Chinese dialects not fit for use in classrooms. Commie propaganda? Please convince me that I am living in a communist state all these while!--Huaiwei 19:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Any real specialists in the area would not consider this a dialect but a language, many languages share writing systems and the lingustic categorization is not based on writen scrips. Enlil Ninlil 06:18, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Any real specialists in the area would not think the Chinese dialects are related due to writtern scripts alone. Do you know enough of Chinese grammar and semantics to form this simplistic assumption?--Huaiwei 08:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

text: You know it was very confusing navigating to this page. Since sometimes I get too lazy go navigate to wikipedia to search, i just type the language on google.is and the number 1 result is Wiki. The thing is, I type in Cantonese and I was so confused cause I was looking for Cantonese language. Linguistics is the study of the science of a language, so I figured okay, Cantonese linguistics is not what I need since that article would just give the things like Labeals and Nasal sounds and so on. Pfft, thus, I think we all agree it needs to be changed. :) --Girdi 06:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Cantonese (linguistics)"??