Names
The prototypical use of the name "Cantonese" in English is for the Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of Yue, but it is commonly used for Yue as a whole. To avoid confusion, academic texts may call the primary branch of Chinese Yue, following the Mandarin pinyin spelling, and either restrict "Cantonese" to its common usage as the dialect of Guangzhou, or avoid the term "Cantonese" altogether and distinguish Yue from Canton or Guangzhou dialect.
In Chinese, people of Hong Kong, of Macau, and Cantonese immigrants abroad usually call the Yue language Gwóngdùng wá (廣東話) "speech of Guangdong". People of Guangdong and Guangxi do not use that term, but rather Yuht Yúh (粵語) "Yue language". They also use baahk wá (白話) on its own to refer to the Guangzhou dialect. It is also used to refer to Yue dialects in Guangxi, as for example in an expression like "南宁白话", which means the baak waa of Nanning.
Read more about this topic: Yue Chinese
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The pangs of conscience, where are the pangs of conscience? Orestes and Clytemnestra, Reinhold doesn’t even know the names of those fine folk. He simply hopes, heartily and sincerely, that Franz is dead as a doornail and won’t be found.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“You shall see men you never heard of before, whose names you don’t know,... and many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who sit in parlors never dream of.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)