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Hoisanese

Taishanese
台山话 / 台山話
Native to China, overseas communities particularly in United States and Canada
Region western and southern Guangdong, the Pearl River Delta; historic Chinese communities in California and New York City, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Native speakers
3+ million (date missing)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-6 tisa
Glottolog tois1237
Taishanese
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese

Taishanese, or Toishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 台山話; Taishanese: [hɔi˨san˧wa˧˨˥]), is a dialect of Yue Chinese. The dialect is related to and is often referred to as Cantonese but has little mutual intelligibility with the latter. Taishanese is spoken in the southern part of Guangdong Province in China, particularly in and around the city-level county of Taishan. In the mid to late 19th century, a significant number of Chinese emigration to North America originated from this area, making Taishanese a dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.

The earliest linguistic studies refer to the dialect of Llin-nen or Xinning (simplified Chinese: 新宁; traditional Chinese: 新寧). Xinning was renamed Taishan in 1914, and linguistic literature has since generally referred to the local dialect as the Taishan dialect, a term based on the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. Alternative names have also been used. The term Toishan is a convention used by the United States Postal Service, the Defense Language Institute and the 2000 United States Census. The terms Toishan, Toisan, and Toisaan are all based on Cantonese pronunciation, and are also frequently found in linguistic and non-linguistic literature.Hoisan is a term based on the local pronunciation, although it is generally not used in published literature.


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