Macau Language: Cantonese, Portuguese, Macanese, English

The official languages are Chinese (Cantonese) and Portuguese. English Language is widely spoken by those engaged in trade, tourism and commerce.

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Cantonese Language

Cantonese generally refers to people or things associated with Guangdong Province, Hong Kong or Macau in China.

Cantonese people

Cantonese people are people residing in, or with ancestry in, Guangdong and environs. Many people of Cantonese descent reside in Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, UK, Ireland and the United States, and other places, part of the Chinese overseas diaspora.

Like the Macau architecture, Macau language is a mix
of Portuguese, Cantonese, English, Mandarin and others.

The Cantonese language in Macau

The native speech of many Cantonese people and residents of Guandong, Hong Kong, Macau, and other Chinese communities in China and elsewhere, including a large proportion of overseas Chinese. (Considered a language mainly by non-Chinese scholars, based on intelligibility, or a dialect mainly by Chinese scholars, and in Western popular speech, based on writing system and cultural-historical factors)

The Cantonese language/dialect, broadly, is the speech originally developed among populations of Guangdong and environs.

Cantonese Food Standard Cantonese language is the prestige and mainstream (sub)dialect of Cantonese, historically based on that of Guangzhou, also usually simply called Cantonese.

Cantonese language includes other (sub)dialects, such as Taishan dialect or Waitau.

Cantonese cuisine: cuisine of the style historically popularized in Guangzhou, or broadly, among Chinese communities abroad with origins in Guangdong.

Cantonese language Etymology

The term "Cantonese" derives from the place-name "Canton", a former name used in Western languages for Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province. Most likely, it is a corruption of the Cantonese-language pronunciation Gwong Dung, the name of the province, romanized in former systems as Kwang Tung or Kwangtung.

The name 'Canton' was then erroneously applied to the city of Guangzhou. In some European languages both the city and the province is known as Canton (or similar spellings).

Additional confusion may have come about as a result of confusion between Cantonese-language and other Chinese versions of the name (e.g. Mandarin), as well as mispronunciations by users of the romanization systems.

Portuguese language

Portuguese (Português) language is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Macao Special Administrative Region of China, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

Many linguists consider that Portuguese language and Galician language (the native language of Galicia, Spain) are actually varieties of the same language, but with Galician being strongly influenced by the Spanish language. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts of the world, and is the fifth or sixth most-spoken first language in the world.

Because Brazil, with 184 million inhabitants, constitutes about 51% of South America's population, Portuguese is the most widely spoken language in South America and it is also one of the key languages in Africa.

The language was spread worldwide in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as Portugal created the first and the longest lived modern-world colonial and commercial empire (1415–1975), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macao in China.

Portuguese Camoes As a result, Portuguese is now the official language of several independent countries and is widely spoken or studied as a second language in many others. There are also various Portuguese Creole languages spread all over the world. It is an important minority language in Andorra, Luxembourg, Namibia, and Paraguay.

The Portuguese language is nicknamed A língua de Camões ("The language of Camões", after Luís de Camões, the author of The Lusiads); A última flor do Lácio ("The last flower of Latium", by Olavo Bilac) or The sweet language (by Cervantes). Portuguese language speakers are known as a Lusophone, after the Roman name for the province of Lusitania.

Macaista Chapado

Known by the Macanese people as "Macaista Chapado", but also known as "Patuá" or "Papiá Cristám di Macau" (Port. Papia Cristã de Macau, Eng. Christian language of Macau) or even "Dóci Língu de Macau" (Port. Doce Língua de Macau, Eng. Sweet language of Macao) is an almost extinct Creole language (spoken by just a few Macanese families), which came to exist in Macao in 1557. More about this Macau Language...

Macau China Portugal Mixture

English

In Macau, English is an semi-official language and is widely used in business activities. It is taught from kindergarten level, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and universities.

Substantial numbers of students acquire native-speaker level. It is so widely used and spoken that it is inadequate to say it is merely a second or foreign language, though there are still many people in Macau with poor or no command of English.

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