Toishanese, also romanised Taishanese, is a Yue Chinese variety from Taishan in Guangdong province, part of the Siyi or four counties area southwest of the Pearl River Delta. It is related to Cantonese but differs enough in sound and vocabulary that Cantonese speakers struggle to follow it. Like other Chinese varieties it is tonal and written with Chinese characters. Its historical importance is out of proportion to its home region: the great majority of Chinese migrants to North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came from the Siyi counties, so Toishanese was for decades the dominant language of Chinatowns in the United States and Canada. Cantonese and later Mandarin have since displaced it among younger generations abroad, though it remains in daily use around Taishan itself.
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