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:
“Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“All the names of good and evil are parables: they do not declare, but only hint. Whoever among you seeks knowledge of them is a fool!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)