Yuè

Yue is the southern branch of the Sinitic languages, spoken in Lingnan, covering Guangdong and Guangxi. Once the land of the Hundred Yue peoples, it saw Han settlement begin with the Qin conquest of 214 BCE. After the Qin collapse it became the independent kingdom of Nanyue until the Han annexation of 111 BCE.

Waves of northern settlers at the fall of the Han, Tang and Song assimilated the native population and left a Tai substrate in the colloquial vocabulary. Yue keeps the final consonants and tonal categories of Middle Chinese more faithfully than most Chinese speeches.

By 660 Guangzhou was China's largest port, trading as far as Arabia; its dialect, Cantonese, served the Yue'ou, Muyu and Nanyin ballads and Cantonese opera, written with Chinese characters and local colloquial signs.