Origin of Cantonese language

Introduction

The history of Cantonese language started with proto-Cantonese which formed around ancient Guangzhou city. The historical development of this language can be summarised in the chart below.

Ethnic Tai

The natives of Pearl River Delta are called Tanka (蜑家) people and originally spoke a Tai dialect. They used to live inland before the pressure of the Han Chinese migration forced them towards the coastal sea.

They adopted the Cantonese language and today live mostly in the boats along the coastal region of central Guangdong.

Tanka girl

Proto-Eastern Yue language

The Nanling (南嶺) mountains separated the Yangtze River basin from both Guangdong , Guangxi and Vietnam. See map below.

In 716 AD (Tang dynasty), the Mei-Guan pass (梅關) was built to provide a passage through the Nanling Mountains and this new land route would be used to greatly facilitate large scale migration of Han Chinese from Yangtze River basin to southern China via Jiangxi province.

Nanling mountains

During the late Tang dynasty and after the Tang dynasty collapsed, there were civil wars in northern China which were called Huang Chao rebellion (黃巢之亂) (874-884 AD) and Five Dynasties War (五代戰亂) (907-960 AD).

During this period, a large wave of Han Chinese migrated mostly from Shaanxi and some from Henan via the Mei-Guan land route. Their ancestors stayed for many years in Zhuji Lane (珠機巷), a town near the Mei Pass in northeastern Guangdong. 

Most of them eventually settled in the Pearl River delta around Guangzhou.

As a result of the opening of the Mei-Guan route, the population density shifted rapidly from the old population center around modern-day Wuzhou onto the Pearl River basin in Guangdong from the end of Tang dynasty onwards.

Mei-Guan land route (black arrows)

This dialect spoken by these migrants which was based on Middle Chinese is called proto-Cantonese. This wave would become the predominant Han Chinese subgroup called Cantonese people in Guangdong today. Cantonese literally means people of Canton city (Guangzhou).

Guangfu language

A certain percentage of Han Chinese men who migrated to Guangdong and Guangxi married with the native Tai women. Proto-Cantonese received considerable influences from the proto-Tai language spoken in Guangdong in ancient times.

This dialect gradually developed into the Guangfu (廣府) language with its prestige dialect as modern-day Cantonese dialect (廣洲話). Guangfu literally means the government seat of Guangdong.

This language gradually became the lingua franca of Guangdong and Guangxi and replaced the previous lingua franca which was Guangxin (廣信) language.

Guangzhou aka Canton city became the cultural and linguistic center for Cantonese people since the late 10th century but was replaced by Hong Kong in the late 20th century.

The Guangfu language is mainly spoken in the Pearl River basin. Refer to map below.

Guangfu and closely related speaking regions in Pearl River basin and Xi River

Yong-Xun/Yung Cham language

During 1662-1668 AD (Southern Ming dynasty), Cantonese people from Pearl River delta were forced by the Qing emperor to evacuate the coastline to prevent them from helping the anti-Manchu Southern Ming army with its base in Taiwan.

They migrated mostly to the Yong 邕 river basin around Nanning in Guangxi province and also western Guangdong.

The descendants of these people formed another Yue Chinese language called Yong-Xun 邕潯 language with its prestige dialect as Nanning Cantonese 南宁白話.

Migration of Guangfu people to Yong river basin (black arrows)

The people in modern Wuzhou city which used to be Ngau-Lau Yue speakers were overwhelmed by the Guangfu speakers.

Eastern Yue language subfamily

Note this categorization is not based on linguistic similarities alone but also based on ancestral language.

Eastern Yue Chinese languages that are descended from proto-Cantonese include:

• Guangfu spoken in Pearl River basin in Guangdong.
• Yong-Xun (邕潯) spoken in central Guangxi.

Yong-Xun absorbed some loanwords from Pinghua Chinese language in Nanning city whose speakers mainly spoke Pinghua Chinese from the Song dynasty onwards.

Proto-Tai component

Eastern Yue languages have the unique characteristics of having Tai phonology, loanwords and grammatical features influences.

Phonology
Long and short vowels distinction is a unique characteristics of Tai-Kadai languages. This long and short vowel distinction is not present in any other Chinese branches.

word	chinese	short vowel	word	chinese	long vowel
heart	心	sam	three	三	saam
north	北	pak	white	白	paak

 Loanwords

English	Cantonese	Zhuang	Thai
itchy	han	hum	khan
collapse	lam	lam	lom
shake/move	yok	?	yok

Grammar

Many grammatical order follow Tai grammar.

Language	Meaning	Chinese
Cantonese	He gave money me	渠畀錢我
Thai	He gave money me	khau hai ngən phom
Mandarin	He gave me money	他給我錢

Middle Chinese descendant

Proto-Cantonese was first formed during the end of Tang dynasty and is a descendant of the Tang dynasty court language. That's the reason why Cantonese rhymes well with poetry written during the Tang dynasty.

Cantonese is a descendant language of Middle Chinese and not Old Chinese.
This can be illustrated by looking at its phonology in the table below.

Meaning	Chinese character	Old Chinese	Middle Chinese
Fragrant	芳	Phang	Fong
Monastery	寺	Ti	Ci

Conclusion

Cantonese is the language of the Han Chinese who migrated from northern China during the Tang dynasty.

Contrary to popular beliefs, Cantonese language is not the original Yue Chinese language formed in Lingnan region. There is a much older Yue Chinese language which I call Nanyue Chinese in the link below.

Related links

Origin of Nanyue Chinese language
http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/10/origin-of-nanyue-language.html

Ethnic origin of Han Chinese
http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnic-origin-of-han-chinese.html

Sources

• Diversity of Sinitic languages by Hilary Chappell
• https://kknews.cc/history/g8jk9xl.html
• https://kknews.cc/history/y6v95yn.html
• https://kknews.cc/culture/gvo8n89.html
• http://www.vjmedia.com.hk/articles/2014/06/19/75827/
• http://www.vjmedia.com.hk/articles/2014/07/06/77306/
• http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/bauer1996identifying.pdf
• http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2004_3_03_7495.pdf
• https://www.letscorp.net/archives/101754
• http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1947244/uncertain-origins-hong-kongs-tanka-people
• https://kknews.cc/zh-hk/culture/mogoxp2.html

Last updated: 17 Oct 2021

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