Yángjiāng

The Yángjiāng are the Yue people of the Moyang River basin on the Guangdong coast, around Yangjiang and Yangchun, whose speech belongs to the Gao-Yang branch of Yue. It is not intelligible with Guangzhou speech and keeps a lateral fricative shared with Zhuang and Li.

That sound and place names beginning with na, dong and ma record the language of the ancient Li who lived here when Central Plains refugees arrived during the late Han and Three Kingdoms troubles; the settlers led local sinicization while their speech absorbed Li elements.

The land became the seat of Gaozhou in 527 and gained its name with Yangjiang county in 598. In 1048 its prefecture was renamed Nan'en, the name it bore around 1337, until the Ming merged it into Zhaoqing in 1368. The coastal county became known for knives, lacquerware and fermented black beans.