What was before Mandarin?

Most linguists classify all of the variations of spoken Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended.

Is Mandarin based on Cantonese?

Cantonese and Mandarin are forms of Chinese. Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong, Macau, GuangZhou, and Southern parts of China in that vicinity. Cantonese and Mandarin are written in the same way, though Cantonese favors traditional Chinese characters rather than simplified. Mandarin has 4 tones.

What language did the Ming dynasty speak?

Mandarin
In the Ming dynasty the official language was called guānhuà ‘language of the officials,’ or “Mandarin” by Westerners.

What language is spoken in Cantonese?

Cantonese is spoken by the people of Hong Kong, Macau and the wider Guangdong province , including Guangzhou (previously Canton in English). Most foreign Chinese communities, such as those in London and San Francisco, also speak Cantonese because historically Chinese immigrants hailed from Guangdong.

Is Mandarin and Cantonese written the same?

Mandarin and Cantonese sometimes share a word that descended from a common Middle Chinese word, but whose pronunciation diverged. In this case, they both use the same character(s) for the word. But Cantonese always uses traditional characters, while Mandarin is written with simplified characters in China and Singapore.

What is the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese?

Mandarin and Cantonese are two dialects of the Chinese language. Although they share a common alphabet, the spoken language is distinctly different from one another and mutually intelligible. The main difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is that Mandarin is spoken by a larger number of people and is the main language of China.

Is Cantonese the same as traditional Chinese?

It should also be noted that Mandarin is not simplified Chinese and Cantonese is not traditional Chinese. Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken languages. Mandarin is the standard and official spoken language for mainland China and Taiwan .