Cantonese - Cantonese Outside Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau

Cantonese Outside Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau

Historically, the majority of the overseas Chinese originated from two provinces, Fujian and Guangdong. This has resulted in the overseas Chinese having a higher proportion of Fujian and Guangdong languages/dialect speakers than Chinese speakers in China as a whole.

The largest number of Cantonese speakers outside mainland China and Hong Kong are in Canada and the United States; however, speakers of Min dialects predominate among the overseas Chinese in southeast Asia. The Cantonese spoken in Malaysia is known to have borrowed substantially from Malay and other languages.