Cantonese, Hakka and Chaoshan Dialects: The Evolution History of the Three Major Dialects in Guangdong

Cantonese, Hakka and Chaoshan Dialects: The Evolution History of the Three Major Dialects in Guangdong

Guangzhou dialect, located in Lingnan, is obscure to northerners and is often ridiculed as "bird language". However, after the reform and opening up, Guangdong became one of the most developed provinces, and a large number of migrants went south to the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong with the dream of getting rich and accepted the influence of Cantonese. But how did Cantonese come from?

Let a China person who has never studied a foreign language listen to French and German, and he will probably think that both languages sound like nonsense. In the same way, most northerners have the impression of "Cantonese" as "a word I don't understand". In fact, Guangdong dialects are mainly divided into three categories: Cantonese, Hakka dialect and Chaoshan dialect, which are used by Guangfu people, Hakka people and Chaoshan people respectively. In history, the time and way of three dialects entering Guangdong are quite different.

Guangdong dialects are distributed, among which orange is Cantonese, green is Hakka and red is Chaozhou dialect.

From the distribution map of Guangdong dialect, it can be seen that the coastal area of eastern Guangdong is the world of Chaozhou dialect, the northern mountainous area of Guangdong is dominated by Hakka dialect, and the Pearl River Delta and most parts of western Guangdong are the base camps of Cantonese.

So which dialect is the most authentic and oldest "Cantonese"?

Whether Cantonese, Hakka or Chaoshan dialect are "outsiders" to this land of Guangdong, the residents of early Guangdong were actually Baiyue people.

What kind of existence is Baiyue? I haven't fully understood it yet, but judging from the word "hundred", it is probably the collective name of many people in the south-just as northerners classify several dialects with great differences in Guangdong as "bird language" today. People in China in the pre-Qin period were not interested in studying how southerners were classified at that time, but summarized them by "Hundred Leaps". At that time, not only Guangdong, but also a large part of the south belonged to Baiyue.

Qin Shihuang struck a hundred times, and Lingnan was finally incorporated into the territory of the Central Plains.

The language of Baiyue people in ancient times did not leave too many records. Yueren Song is one of the few precious materials to record the ancient Baiyue language. It is said that Vietnamese boatmen sang the words of Yin E, a gentleman of Chu. The original text is: "Indiscriminate grass is given to Changze, to Changzhou, Cangzhou, and not to Xu Qin." Although it is still controversial what language the Vietnamese sing, there are ancient Vietnamese, ancient Dong-Tai language (the ancestor of modern Thai and Zhuang language) and even ancient Miao language. But anyone who can read can see that it can never be from China. The Yangtze River basin is still so, not to mention Lingnan, which is an alienated place in the eyes of Central Plains people.

After Qin destroyed the six countries, it continued to focus on the expansion of Lingnan. With the Qin Dynasty attacking Baiyue three times, Lingnan was finally brought under the Central Plains regime. Qin established Nanhai County in today's Guangdong, and the soldiers who participated in pacifying Lingnan settled in Lingnan, bringing China people to Guangdong. With the increasing control of the Central Plains Dynasty over Lingnan and its southward migration, Guangdong gradually turned into a region dominated by Chinese. In the Pearl River Delta, Guangzhou-centered Chinese has gradually developed into a distinctive dialect, namely Cantonese.

However, the origins of Chaoshan people and Chaoshan dialect are quite different. There is a saying in chaozhou people called "chaozhou people Minzu", which shows the origin of one's ancestors.

Fujian is a mountainous area with a limited population. Historically, Fujian people have been moving out, and there are descendants of Fujian immigrants from Liaodong Peninsula to the coast of China on Hainan Island. As the most popular surname in Fujian, Lin may be the best example to illustrate the widespread distribution of Fujian immigrants in China. Today, most Lin surnames in coastal areas can be traced back to Fujian, and even Lin surnames in northern areas such as Rongcheng, Wendeng and Dalian in Liaoning can find their ancestors in Putian, Fujian.

Wherever Fujian people go, Lin's surname follows.

There is an alluvial plain in Chaoshan area adjacent to Fujian, which is formed by three rivers: Hanjiang, Rongjiang and Lianjiang. Fertile land and mild climate have naturally become the first choice for Fujian immigrants to live. In Chaoshan area, Lin is the second surname, accounting for nearly 8% of the total population. In contrast, Lin in Guangzhou is only the tenth surname, accounting for only 2% of the population, which confirms the saying that "Chaoshan people are ancestors of Fujian". As a result, Minnan dialect brought by Fujian immigrants has developed into Chaoshan dialect, another major dialect in Guangdong.

Although both Cantonese and Chaoshan dialect exist in Lingnan area, they are generally peaceful because of their different distribution areas. However, after the Song Dynasty, with the entry of a group of new immigrants, both Cantonese and Chaoshan dialect are facing the challenge of a new language, and this powerful competitor is Hakka dialect.

As the name implies, Hakka dialect is the dialect spoken by Hakka people. Although some people think that the history of Hakka's southward migration can be traced back to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, as far as local chronicles are concerned, Hakka's southward migration to Lingnan was later than Guangfu people and Chaoshan people. At that time, the fertile plains in Guangdong were basically developed, so Hakkas often lived in mountainous areas that were not easy to develop, such as Xingning and Meizhou. According to the Taiping Universe in the early Song Dynasty, Sheyao is still the main area in Xingmei, with only 300 Hakka households in Meizhou and no guests in Chaozhou. Less than a hundred years later, the Hakka people in Yuanfeng Jiuzhi have successfully "turned against customers" in Xingmei area.

Hakka dwellings

With the gradual increase of Hakka population, the disadvantage of low population carrying capacity in mountainous areas has begun to stand out. So the Hakkas moved to the Pearl River Delta, which changed the language distribution in Guangdong again. For example, Guangdong Tongzhi in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty recorded that "if Boluo and Heyuan are close to Huizhou, they have the same pronunciation", indicating that Hakka is not spoken in the two places, but with the gradual entry of Hakkas, both Boluo and Heyuan are now dominated by Hakkas. With the Hakka people gradually deepening into Cantonese, the contradiction between Cantonese people began to increase gradually.

At that time, the contradiction between Guangdong and Hakka was quite serious, and they carried out all-round personal attacks on each other with various routines. It is worth noting that today, there is a competitive relationship between the two ethnic groups, and they often say that they are local aborigines. For example, Indians in the United States, aborigines in Australia, and Maori in New Zealand all think that they should be the main body of their respective countries, because they have lived there longer than the European colonists who moved in in modern times. However, in those days, neither Cantonese-speaking Guangfu people nor Hakka people had much interest in calling themselves Guangdong natives, but tried their best to describe themselves as descendants of the "Central Plains aristocrats", while the other side was a local barbarian. For example, in the Local Records of Guangdong compiled by Huang Jie, a native of Shunde, Hakka people say that they are "neither from Guangdong nor from China".

In this context, Cantonese and Hakka dialects are also regarded as symbols and evidence of orthodoxy. In terms of Guangfu, Changdi's "Guangzhou Rhyme" said: "Guangzhou dialect is in harmony with the rhyme of Sui and Tang Dynasties, which is beyond others' reach ... The reason why Guangzhong people have a good voice is that people from the Central Plains have moved to Guangzhong for more than a thousand years, and today's Guangzhou dialect is the voice of the Central Plains in Sui and Tang Dynasties, so it is closely related to the rhyme of Sui and Tang Dynasties. "Improve Cantonese to the status of the original sound in Sui and Tang Dynasties. On the other hand, Hakka dialect is "blunt" and "noisy".

For this blatant smear, Hakka people are certainly not to be outdone. For example, there is a very interesting record in Hakka Xu's Miscellaneous Notes on Hu Feng Lake: "Although Hakka is different from the mainland, its reading sound is very positive, so it is accessible everywhere because it left its hometown and passed through the mainland; But it is still not as strong as the customs and language of the local people. The locals still call me a guest because of my customs and language, and my guests still call themselves guests because of their customs and language. As far as Hakka is concerned, the customs and languages of natives and Hakka are different. Then the soil comes out of the soil, the guest comes out of the guest, the soil is in the soil, and the guest is my guest. I am afraid that I have studied for hundreds of years, or today. " Since Hakka dialect is "correct", it is no wonder that Hakka people want to "sell their ancestral fields rather than forget their ancestral words"

Although the early southward Chinese successfully strengthened the local Baiyue language, by the time the Hakkas moved southward, Guangfu people had established themselves in the Pearl River Delta and had political, economic and cultural advantages. Obviously, it was impossible to be "strong and unified".

With the increasing population in Guangdong province, the antagonism between local people and foreigners due to the competition for survival also constantly breeds, which provoked the Qing court and even triggered a large-scale struggle. For example, in today's Siyi area (Taishan, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping on the west bank of the Pearl River Delta, collectively referred to as Siyi), the struggle between locals and tourists is particularly fierce. It is reported that "fourteen years of vendetta, killing millions."

Long-term large-scale fighting has done far more harm to Hakkas than Guangfu people. Although brave and good at fighting, the Pearl River Delta is, after all, the base camp of Guangfu, and Guangfu people generally have some relatives and friends who can take refuge in the case of defeat and escape. In contrast, if Hakkas are forced to leave their homes, they often have nowhere to go, become bandits and become targets of government forces.

There are not many Hakka areas in the Pearl River Delta, and Zhangmutou Town in Dongguan, a pure Hakka, can be taken as an example.

Finally, in order to solve the struggle between natives and Hakkas, the Qing court sent some Hakkas in the Pearl River Delta back to their hometown in eastern Guangdong and even other provinces. Today, many Hakkas in southern Jiangxi have moved from Guangdong to Jiangxi after the struggle between locals and Hakkas. This series of changes has led to a sharp decline in the Hakka population in the Pearl River Delta. For example, before the fighting among local Hakkas in Siyi, Hakkas accounted for about one-fifth of the local population, but only three percent after the dust settled. The influence of Hakka dialect in the Pearl River Delta has been greatly reduced, and Hakka dialect has lost the possibility of further expansion in the Pearl River Delta.

Since the dust settled, Cantonese in the Pearl River Delta has gained a decisive advantage in the competition with Hakka dialect, and the scattered Hakka people have gradually been assimilated into Cantonese. According to the research in recent years, as long as the proportion of Cantonese is above 10%, the whole village will gradually choose Cantonese as the communication language, but Hakka dialect will be "strongly unified" by Cantonese. However, in Meizhou, Huiyang and other places, the status of Hakka dialect is still unbreakable, and Cantonese is powerless. Chaoshan dialect in eastern Guangdong turned a deaf ear to things outside the window and continued to operate its own one-acre three-point land. In this way, the three major dialects in Guangdong finally reached a certain degree of balance, and the pattern of each dialect was formally formed.