客家人和潮州人 Kèjiārén hé Cháozhōurén — Hakka and Teochew

Three languages in one province, and why the names matter

Guangdong is usually shorthand for Cantonese, and that is wrong in a way this lesson exists to correct. The province holds three large communities with three mutually unintelligible languages: 广府 or Cantonese proper around Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta; 潮汕 or Teochew in the east around Chaozhou and Shantou, which belongs to the Southern Min family and is therefore closer to Taiwanese and Hokkien than to Cantonese; and 客家 or Hakka across the northern and eastern uplands and into Fujian and Jiangxi. There are others — Leizhou Min in the far southwest, Tanka boat communities, Cantonese subvarieties that differ substantially from the Guangzhou standard. The Hakka are the most interesting case for a learner because the language records a migration. The name means guest families, and the standard account is a series of southward movements from the north over roughly a thousand years, with each wave arriving as incomers into land already occupied — hence the upland settlements, the fortified 围屋, a strong internal cohesion, and a reputation for education and for leaving. Hakka people are wildly over-represented in the diaspora and in modern Chinese history: Lee Kuan Yew, Deng Xiaoping and Sun Yat-sen were all of Hakka descent, and Hakka communities are substantial in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Mauritius. The Teochew are the other great migrating community of this coast, with enormous populations in Thailand — where ethnic Chinese are largely Teochew — Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. Teochew cooking is distinct from Cantonese, the language is not mutually intelligible with it, and the commercial networks built on 同乡 ties were and are formidable. What a visitor should take from this is a habit of precision. 广东话 loosely means Cantonese, and in Guangzhou it is fine; said to a Teochew or Hakka person about their own language it is simply wrong, which is the point of Alex's last line. Ask 你们家是哪里人？ or 你祖籍是哪儿？, which are ordinary questions, and expect an answer with a county in it. And expect the answer to matter: 祖籍 shapes what people eat at home, which festivals they keep, whom their family knows, and in the diaspora which association their grandparents belonged to. One practical note. If you are learning Mandarin, none of these languages is an obstacle — everybody under sixty in urban Guangdong speaks it. But asking about them is one of the most reliable ways to have a long and enthusiastic conversation, because most foreigners never do.