Yue Chinese - Dialects

Dialects

Yue dialects are spoken in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, an area long dominated culturally and economically by the city of Guangzhou (Canton) at the mouth of the Pearl River. The Cantonese dialect, also spoken in Hong Kong and Macau, is the prestige variety of Yue. The influence of Guangzhou has spread westward along the Pearl River system, so that for example the speech of the Guangxi city of Wuzhou some 190 km upstream is much more similar to that of Guangzhou than dialects of coastal districts that are closer but separated from the the city by hilly terrain. One of these coastal dialects, Taishanese, is the most common Yue dialect among overseas communities.