Around 85 million people speak Cantonese globally.

Cantonese is part of the Yue branch of Sinitic languages in the Sino Tibetan family.

Even though written characters in traditional Hanzi are the same, spoken Cantonese and Mandarin are generally not mutually intelligible.

Cantonese is known for its complex tonal system, commonly said to have six to nine tones, depending on how they are counted.

Cantonese has more base syllables without tones than Mandarin, roughly fifty percent more.

It’s difficult for new learners. Even advanced Mandarin speakers immersed in Cantonese speaking environments can struggle to produce native-like Cantonese tones.

Three year old Cantonese speaking children may not yet perceive or produce tones at adult accuracy; perception can be more accurate than production at that age.

One major romanization for Cantonese is Jyutping, developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. There is also a Yale romanization system for Cantonese, used often by learners.

Some Cantonese sounds and phonology preserve features closer to Middle Chinese, more so than Mandarin does.

Many famous Hong Kong movies and Cantopop songs are in Cantonese, contributing to its cultural reach.