Cantonese is a tone language in the Sinitic languages under the family of Sino-Tibetan languages. It is distributed in the regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau. The origin of Cantonese is Yayan, spoken in the ancient Central Plain region of China, was spread to the region of Liangguang (Guangdong and Guangxi) during Qin and Han dynasties and was then infused with the local Baiyue language (ancient Yue language). Although it is defined by China as one of the seven dialects of Chinese languages, general Hong Kong’s and overseas linguists as well as UNESCO recognize it as a language. Independent research organizations of Cantonese have been established in plenty of elite overseas educational institutions. Cantonese, originated from ancient Chinese in Eastern Zhou dynasty, preserves the largest amount of elements from ancient Chinese among other Chinese languages.
Cantonese literature has a long-standing history, in which colloquial Cantonese was included in traditional Cantonese operas, dialogues and lyrics. In terms of literary forms, there were pieces where vocabularies from Cantonese were merged into old styles of poems in Qing dynasty. Currently there are around 50 million people using Cantonese as their mother language.
