Cantonese

Cantonese
廣東話 ／ 广东话
Gwóngdūng Wá / gwong2 dung1 waa2 (Cantonese) written in traditional Chinese (left) and simplified Chinese (right) characters
Native to	China, Hong Kong, Macau, overseas communities
Region	Guangdong, eastern Guangxi
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Yue Yuehai Cantonese
Dialects	Guangzhou Xiguan Hong Kong
Writing system	Written Cantonese Cantonese Braille Written Chinese
Official status
Official language in	Hong Kong  Macau
Regulated by	Official Language Division Civil Service Bureau Government of Hong Kong Departamento dos Assuntos Linguísticos Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau () Government of Macau
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	yyef (Yue F) guzh (Guangzhou)
Glottolog	cant1236
Linguasphere	79-AAA-ma

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variant of Yue Chinese spoken in the vicinity of Guangdong (known historically as Canton in Western European languages) in southern China. It is the traditional prestige dialect of Yue.

Cantonese is the language of the Cantonese people. In mainland China, it is a lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas, such as Guangxi. It is the majority language of Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta region of China. Cantonese is also one of the major varieties of Chinese spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam and Malaysia, and to a lesser extent in Singapore and Cambodia) and the predominant variety spoken in the Western World, especially in the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.

While the term Cantonese refers narrowly to the prestige variety, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue branch of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible dialects such as Taishanese. When standard Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, there are about 80 million total speakers.