About Cantonese
Cantonese or Yue (粵) is one of the major Chinese dialect group or language. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is known as gwong2 dung1 waa6 ( 廣東話 ) (Mandarin: Guǎngdōng Huà) . Outside of Hong Kong it is referred to as 粵語 (Mandarin: Yuè Yǔ).
Cantonese is spoken mostly by people in the southern provinces of China like Guangdong and Guangxi and in neighboring areas such as Hong Kong, Macao Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. It is also the dominant form of Chinese spoken in the Chinatowns of many major cities like in the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
The word Cantonese comes from Canton, the former English name of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, which was once considered the home of the purest form of Cantonese. However, through years of mass media and pop culture influence, Hong Kong has now truly become the cultural centre of Cantonese.
Cantonese is mainly an oral language. People in Hong Kong speak Cantonese in their daily interactions with people. As a colloquial language, Cantonese is full of slang and non-standard usage. The language of youth is rapidly evolving, and new slang and trendy expressions are constantly emerging.
Purpose of This Site
I believe that understanding one another's language or dialect is an essential part of my goal in putting up this tutorials. Most of the content on this site is intended to help foreigners like me to quickly learn how to communicate in Chinese(Cantonese) in less time. The phrases or Chinese terms listed on this site had been translated to English and Tagalog.
The site is not intended as a source of income for me, but there are ways in which the site earns money like Google advertising. I chose Google because it shows advertisements relevant to the page contents, sometimes even complementing what's already there.
Should you have suggestions or comments, you could send it to refnotes@gmail dot com.