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About Cantonese Language



Countries

Countries
Hong Kong, Macau

Total No. Of Countries
2 13

National Language
China, Guangdong

Second Language
Not spoken in any of the countries

Speaking Continents
Asia

Minority Language
Hawaii

Regulated By
Civil Service Bureau, Government of Hong Kong, Official Language Division

Interesting Facts
  • Cantonese have lot of slangs, many of them include words that do not make sense at all and some also have English in them.
  • Even though Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of Chinese, Cantonese has 8 tones instead of Mandarin's 4.

Similar To
Chinese Language

Derived From
-

Alphabets

Alphabets in
Cantonese-Alphabets.jpg#200

Alphabets
28 10

Phonology

How Many Vowels
8 5

How Many Consonants
20 10

Scripts
Chinese Characters and derivatives

Writing Direction
Left-To-Right, Horizontal, Top-To-Bottom

Hard to Learn

Language Levels
10 8

Time Taken to Learn
88 weeks 19

Greetings

Hello
您好

Thank You
谢谢

How Are You?
你好吗?

Good Night
晚安

Good Evening
晚上好

Good Afternoon
下午好

Good Morning
早上好

Please

Sorry
遗憾

Bye
再见

I Love You
我爱你

Excuse Me
原谅我

Dialects

Dialect 1
Guangzhou

Where They Speak
outside mainland China

How Many People Speak
71,000,000.00 13

Dialect 2
Xiguan

Where They Speak
Hong Kong

How Many People Speak
71,000,000.00 11

Dialect 3
Hong Kong

Where They Speak
Hong Kong

How Many People Speak
70,000,000.00 10

Total No. Of Dialects
3 3

How Many People Speak

How Many People Speak?
60.00 million 27

Speaking Population
16.00 % 2

Native Speakers
52.00 million 21

Second Language Speakers
71.00 million 15

Native Name
Kwang Tung Wa

Alternative Names
Guangfu, Metropolitan Cantonese

French Name
cantonais

German Name
Kantonesisch

Pronunciation
[kʰɐn˧˥tʰœːn˧˥sɨ˧˥]

Ethnicity
Han Chinese

History

Origin
17th century

Language Family
Sino-Tibetan Family

Subgroup
-

Branch
-

Language Forms

Early Forms
No early forms

Standard Forms
Standard Cantonese

Language Position
1 1

Signed Forms
Signed Cantonese

Scope
-

Code

ISO 639 1
No data available

ISO 639 2

ISO 639 2/T
yue

ISO 639 2/B
yue

ISO 639 3
No data available

ISO 639 6
yue

Glottocode
cant1236

Linguasphere
No data available

Types of Language

Language Type
-

Language Linguistic Typology
-

Language Morphological Typology
-

Summary >>
<< Code

Know Alphabets in Cantonese

When you start learning to write in any language the Alphabets form a skeleton of any language. Let's talk About Cantonese Language, where you will learn the number of letter in Cantonese Alphabets. Every language has its own set of alphabets or characters so it is necessary to know alphabets in Cantonese. Cantonese phonology gives Cantonese vowels and Cantonese consonants. There are 8 vowels and 20 consonants in Cantonese language. Based upon the number of alphabet, vowels and consonants in the language we can check if Cantonese is one of the Most Difficult Languages. All about Cantonese language is given in detail in this section.

Most Difficult Languages

All Cantonese countries

Want to explore all Cantonese countries? About Cantonese language serves you with all Cantonese Speaking Countries. Countries that use Cantonese as official language are called as Cantonese countries.

  • Countries that use Cantonese as their National Language are: China, Guangdong.

Second language indicates to any language which the person learns in addition to first or native language.

  • Countries that use Cantonese as second language are: Cantonese is not spoken as second language in any of the countries.

You can also go through all European Languages and explore more about their speaking population, alphabets, greetings, dialects and many more.

Compare Most Difficult Languages

Learn Cantonese greetings

Languages are used by every human being to communicate. And communication begins with the greetings. First step to form any interaction is to learn Cantonese Greetings. Whenever you are travelling to new country where in you don’t know the local language of that country then you should at least be familiar with some greetings to start any formal or informal conversion. When we talk about Cantonese language, we are always interested in learning useful phrases in Cantonese language.Learn Cantonese greetings that can be used in formal situations:

  • Hello: 您好
  • Thank you: 谢谢
  • Good Morning: 早上好
  • Good Evening: 晚上好
  • Good Afternoon: 下午好

All Cantonese Language Codes

Get to know all Cantonese language codes here. There are several languages spoken all over the world where in most of the languages have alternate names which come from diverse sources. All Cantonese Language Codes are assigned with unique code. There is usually two or three letters code for each language. In most of the applications, these language codes are used where it is tedious to use language names.

Most Difficult Languages

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