<p>Wiktionary, in <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87#Noun" rel="noreferrer">its entry on 「中文」</a>, says this (uncited) in its 2nd and 3rd definitions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>中文</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>(<em>Mainland China, Taiwan, <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#proscribed" rel="noreferrer">proscribed</a></em>) Mandarin</li>
<li>(<em>Hong Kong, Macau</em>) Cantonese</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>In Sense (2), the <em>proscribed</em> note is very important. It basically means that in Mainland China and Taiwan, the word 「中文」 is commonly interpreted to mean <em>Mandarin</em>, and not any other variety of Chinese, hence the reaction from the organiser; this is in spite of authorities' recommendation against interpreting 「中文」 as <em>Mandarin</em> rather than the more general idea of <em>Chinese</em>.</p>
<p>Sense (3) matches my experience with Cantonese speakers - when a conversation is conducted in Cantonese, 「中文」 in a spoken sense means <em>Cantonese</em>, not <em>Mandarin</em>.</p>
<hr />
<p>To sum up:</p>
<ul>
<li>Cantonese is definitely a variety of Chinese, nobody can seriously contest this. The English word &quot;Chinese&quot; broadly refers to any member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinitic_languages" rel="noreferrer">Sinitic languages</a>.</li>
<li>The situation you observed basically reveals differences in people's understanding of common words due to different cultural or social conditions. If left to evolve on their own for a long time, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate" rel="noreferrer">cognates</a> eventually become <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend#Shared_etymology" rel="noreferrer">false friends with shared etymology</a>. A more extreme example is the unqualified word 「國語」; this word:
<ul>
<li>Is not really used in Mainland China;</li>
<li>Is the most common way to refer to &quot;Mandarin&quot; in Taiwan;</li>
<li>Among Chinese-speaking Malaysians, it refers to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language" rel="noreferrer">Malay Language</a>;</li>
<li>In Japanese and Korean, it refers to the Japanese and Korean languages, respectively;</li>
<li>In Vietnamese, it refers to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet" rel="noreferrer">Vietnamese alphabet</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-06T14:13:09.277Z
I would add that in HK and Macau, Chinese predominantly is used in contrast to English/Portugese. The predominant Chinese variety there is Cantonese.
xngtng
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2024-02-07T03:10:01.000Z
I think you’re mixing up _prescribed_ and _proscribed_. _Prescribed_ means what you describe: it’s taught and considered correct by official standards, but may not reflect actual usage. _Proscribed_ means it’s considered to be **incorrect** by some authorities, so in this case it would mean that 中文 was _not_ taught to refer specifically to Mandarin, and that such a usage would be considered incorrect by some unnamed authority.
Janus Bahs Jacquet
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2024-02-07T03:23:30.277Z
@JanusBahsJacquet whoops - thanks for the correction! That changes the interpretation a bit, but it still means a large swathe of the population thinks 中文 = Mandarin.
dROOOze
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2024-02-09T03:07:30.597Z
Can confirm Sense 3: in all Cantonese conversations I've had, 中文 means either spoken Cantonese or written Chinese (depending on the context), rather than spoken Mandarin.
yawnoc
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2024-02-06T02:47:25.163Z
2024-02-07T03:25:37.503Z
2024-02-07T03:25:37.503Z
dROOOze
<p>Cantonese is one of many Chinese dialects, Mandarin is also one of many Chinese dialects. The difference is Mandarin is the <strong>current</strong> official language of the entire China.</p>
<p>And yes! Cantonese is <strong>a</strong> Chinese language!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The exact words more or less were 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>广东歌 is also a kind of 中文歌. Mandarin is the representative of the Chinese language but it is not the only Chinese language</p>
<p>You can ask the same question replacing Cantonese with another Chinese dialect, my answer would be the same: &quot;XX dialect&quot; is also a Chinese language</p>

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2024-02-06T02:02:10.240Z
That's exactly what I've always thought!
河南宝宝
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2024-02-06T02:22:03.447Z
It is like the modern representative of "weapon" is the handgun, but you can't say only a handgun is a weapon and  a knife is not
Tang Ho
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2024-02-06T06:50:14.600Z
There are multiple answers to this question, depending on whether you answer from the point of view of "historical national identity" where language was not a unifying component, or "present day political identity", where language is. An American citizen could often speak  Mandarin socially, but when asked what is American, linguistically, the answer has to be "English", linguistically speaking. So, ask a mainland Chinese, (ethnically Cantonese or Hakka), what is his national language, the answer has to be Mandarin or Putonghua. He would not say Cantonese or Hakka.
Wayne Cheah
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2024-02-06T07:26:15.420Z
You said it - National Language -- Not Chinese language
Tang Ho
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2024-02-06T07:46:50.487Z
Yes, I don't see how any Mainland Chinese could deny that Cantonese is a "Chinese Language" If Cantonese is not a "Chinese" language, then what is it? Even if it is a "dialect", is it not a Chinese dialect? That would be like saying the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan is not a Chinese language, linguistically speaking?
Wayne Cheah
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2024-02-06T10:00:31.330Z
I would add that Mandarin, Cantonese and various other Chinese dialects are all spoken languages which share the exact same written language. The Chinese characters are all the same Chinese but they can be read out aloud in either Mandarin or Cantonese or any other dialect.
quarague
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2024-02-06T18:14:48.723Z
@quarague That's not correct. Speakers of all Chinese languages are encouraged from school age to write in [Modern Standard Chinese (現代標準漢語)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese) across Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They don't usually write their own language in education and official communications, but they do exist; see e.g. [Yue Wikipedia (粵文維基百科)](https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/頭版), [Wu Wikipedia (吳語維基百科)](https://wuu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=封面&variant=wuu-hant), and [Gan Wikipedia (贛語版本嗰維基百科)](https://gan.wikipedia.org/wiki/封面).
dROOOze
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2024-02-06T01:37:45.157Z
2024-02-06T01:49:53.120Z
2024-02-06T01:49:53.120Z
Tang Ho
<p>As a native Hongkonger, I can tell you that a local schoolkid would say &quot;I can speak Chinese and Mandarin&quot; or &quot;我識講中文同普通話&quot; for which Chinese/中文 means Cantonese in the local context.</p>
<p>But logically, 中文 is not a language you can speak. Literally it refers to the written language (文), not the spoken language (語). Therefore whether Cantonese is 中文, I would say no. But whether Cantonese is a Chinese, that should be yes.</p>
<p>Similarly speaking, if that happens in Zhengzhou, it is understandable that Chinese is exclusively Mandarin.</p>

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2024-02-08T03:13:03.327Z
2024-02-08T03:13:03.327Z
Adrian Tam
<p>Cantonese is Chinese.</p>
<p>After that being said, when somebody says &quot;Chinese&quot; in Mainland China, it is automatically assumed that Chinese refers to putonghua, particularly outside of Guangdong.</p>

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2024-02-06T02:09:26.220Z
Could it be that there is another name for Chinese which is more inclusive of dialects, but 中文 is intended to mean "Standard Chinese"?
河南宝宝
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2024-02-06T02:23:30.753Z
I am not aware of any such terms. Don't forget there are literally thousands of dialacts spoken in China. Cantonese is one of the biggest ones, sure. What about Chaozhou-ise? It's pretty big as well. Then there are sub-dialacts of these dialacts. I know a sub-dialact of Cantonese that sounds distinctly alien to your "standard" Cantonese.
fat penguin
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2024-02-06T02:30:58.180Z
中文 is intended to mean "Chinese language"
Tang Ho
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2024-02-06T02:35:03.100Z
@fat penguin Sub-dialects of Cantonese are still Cantonese.  They are also a Chinese language
Tang Ho
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2024-02-06T03:52:07.197Z
@TangHo Is Scottish Engish?
fat penguin
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2024-02-06T04:52:26.227Z
Ask someone from The UK. I only know Canadian English and American English are English too
Tang Ho
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2024-02-06T08:14:29.620Z
@fat penguin how about 华语、汉语？中国话？
河南宝宝
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2024-02-07T03:14:45.203Z
@fatpenguin No, ‘Scottish’ (aka [Scottish] Gaelic, pronounced to rhyme with ‘Gallic’) is a separate language belonging to the Goidelic branch of Insular Celtic languages. ‘Scottish English’, however, is English. ;-)
Janus Bahs Jacquet
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2024-02-06T01:59:41.580Z
2024-02-06T01:59:41.580Z
fat penguin
<p>&quot;中文&quot; certainly includes Cantonese.</p>
<p>To add an authority: In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639_macrolanguage#zho" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ISO 639</a> for example, there is the macrolanguage Chinese (3-letter code <em>zho</em>, presumably from &quot;中文&quot;). Under <em>zho</em> are 16 groups of Sinitic languages. Two of these groups are Mandarin Chinese and Yue Chinese.</p>
<p>So, at least by ISO 639, Yue Chinese (Cantonese) is no less Chinese or &quot;中文&quot; than Mandarin Chinese.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-07T08:33:43.713Z
All native languages used by the native people in the territory of China can be categorized as 中文 .
NanningYouth
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2024-02-08T19:30:57.287Z
What about Uighur or Zhuang?
河南宝宝
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2024-02-09T02:15:50.953Z
@河南宝宝: The Uighur language is *uig* in [ISO 639](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639_language_codes) and separate from Chinese *zho*. The Chinese languages are in the Sino-Tibetan family, while Uighur is in the [Turkic family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language). // The Zhuang macrolanguage is *zha* in ISO 639 (again also separate from Chinese). The [Zhuang (or Tai) languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_languages) are in the [Kra-Dai family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kra%E2%80%93Dai_languages) (which also contains Thai and Lao).
user103496
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2024-02-07T04:27:59.033Z
2024-02-07T04:27:59.033Z
user103496
<p>Technically it is an accent of Chinese that, as it clearly uses Chinese characters but on a vastly different context, despite the pronunciation system have some differences, it is still considered coherent most of the time.</p>
<p>It's actually quite simple to find parallels around the world -- Just think about Cantonese to (Mandarin) Chinese as Quebec French to Metropolitan French (the real French in Europe).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-08T17:04:38.440Z
2024-02-08T17:04:38.440Z
Steve Fan
<p>Mandarin is满族话, not Chinese汉语, which is the language of Han people.
Canton means 广东 in French, but has been mistakenly used for 广州 for a long time.
华语 is a word acceptable to all Chinese around the world. 华 is actually a word that is hard to define.</p>

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2024-02-07T04:28:51.583Z
满族话 is [Manchurian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_language), not Mandarin. Manchurian is a completely different language (not even in the Sino-Tibetan family).
user103496
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2024-02-07T04:35:50.643Z
*Canton* is indeed from 广东 (gwong2 dung1) but through the Portuguese *Cantão*, not French.
user103496
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2024-02-07T08:29:44.407Z
@user103496 As Guangdong and Guangxi, or the Double Guangs两广， were the colony of France in the 19th century, so it was very likely Canton derived from French but not likely from Portuguese. The sphere of influecne of Portugual from that time till 1999 was in Macao, a very small island with small population.
NanningYouth
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2024-02-07T09:17:45.560Z
The name Cantão or Canton obviously arose centuries before the 19th. *Since their first contacts with China in 1513, the Portuguese called the city of Guangzhou, 'Cantão' ('Canton')* http://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/20033/1289
user103496
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2024-02-07T04:25:30.283Z
2024-02-07T04:25:30.283Z
NanningYouth
<p>Cantonese is Chinese.</p>
<p>He just don't want to give out prize and finding excuse, such action is common practice here in my home town in China. If the men used Putonghua, he will probably ask for Zhengzhou dialect and so on. The keys is to attract people for more sales and afterward they can say they have fired the men doing this and reputation is back too.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-07T07:11:18.997Z
2024-02-07T07:11:18.997Z
Johnny C.
<p>There is no serious dispute that, in linguistic and general usage, Cantonese is a Chinese language in English, or 汉语 in Chinese.</p>
<p>The question is that 中文 and 华语/华文, while generally synonyms of 汉语, can carry different connotations or even has semantically narrowed in some cases.</p>
<hr />
<p>First as a disclaimer, as a native speaker of Mandarin (northeastern China), I am biased towards my own usage/experience and the usage I am used to, which is necessarily incomplete give the size of China and other Chinese-speaking territories. I will first give my first impressions about this question, then clarify where I can find support from other sources.</p>
<p>My first impressions:</p>
<ul>
<li>&quot;我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话&quot; sounded awkward to me, but it was not clear why.</li>
<li>&quot;我说的是汉语歌而你唱的是广东话&quot; does not sound awkward to me; but I would have immediately registered it as an incorrect statement.</li>
</ul>
<p>Similarly, while I would say of course to &quot;粤语是汉语&quot;, I have to think and feel I have no choice but to accept &quot;粤语是中文&quot; as true.</p>
<hr />
<p>Although here I cannot discern the difference clearly, there are clear usage differences between 中文 and 汉语 in many cases (at least in my experience): for example, you would almost always say &quot;中文&quot; when referring to the Chinese version of a website or book.</p>
<p>As the last character indicate, 中文 may put a little bit of emphasis on the written system of Chinese languages, which nowadays, in relatively formal settings, overwhelmingly correspond to the current standard variety, Mandarin. This does not preclude 中文 from being used for the oral language though, e.g. there is nothing wrong with saying 中文歌 or 中文频道。In the latter case (中文频道, Chinese channels), most TV or radio branded with 中文 would be using Mandarin. The meaning of 中文 has narrowed in some cases compared to 汉语 such that you would expect Mandarin for 中文 since 中文 is more widely used and in many usage the standard Chinese is implied by the term.</p>
<p>Semantic narrowing does not have to be logical or technically correct! It is common for absolute synonyms to acquire different specialized meanings or connotations for both to remain in common usage. For example, &quot;meat&quot; in English used to refer to all food; &quot;man&quot; used to mean (and still mean in some cases) all persons, not just adult males</p>
<hr />
<p>Going back to the incident in the question, there is another point to make.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was some kind of sales activity where people were being given freebies, if they would come up in front of everybody and sing a song &quot;in Chinese&quot;. I don't recall why there was that qualification because apart from me everybody in the vicinity was a local.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would think that they specified &quot;Chinese&quot; as opposed to English or another foreign language. The Chinese variety spoken in Zhengzhou is Mandarin. So while they said Chinese, they expected Mandarin. Whether Cantonese is Chinese or not is not a question people usually think about. They probably just wanted to hear something they or most of the audience could understand.</p>
<p>In the context of music particularly, Cantonese music (especially pop) is a very popular and distinct genre of music. While you will see 华语 is often used to refer to Chinese and &quot;technically&quot; lexically equivalent to 中文 (中/华+语/文), 华语歌 in my experience overwhelmingly refers to Mandarin songs.</p>
<p>In this context, some people may also have a narrowed sense of what count as 中文歌, since they may consider Cantonese songs to be sufficiently distinct as a group. This is a well-known source of semantic narrowing and can often happen in special cases (Macs are personal computers, too).</p>
<p>While I think 95%+ of Mandarin speakers would agree 粤语是汉语， I would expect a significant amount of Mandarin speakers who would not agree that 粤语歌是中文歌 <strong>at first sight</strong>, even if they may agree with the statement after brief reflection (or not so brief).</p>
<hr />
<p>I apologize that the answer is disorganized, but I also hope to share that the relationship between various dialects/topolects/languages in the group of written and oral systems of communications commonly known as Chinese is... complicated. The usage and connotations of words are also hard to discern.</p>

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2024-02-06T18:32:34.197Z
Thanks for an in-depth and detailed answer!
河南宝宝
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2024-02-06T18:36:28.647Z
If 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话 sounds awkward that may be because I don't recall the exact words. It was definitely about whether 广东话 met the qualification of 中文歌 though.
河南宝宝
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2024-02-06T19:49:02.143Z
Speaking of 汉语, I've only encountered this in an academic context. There is 汉语水平考试 and I had a textbook once called 现代汉语 but I don't recall anyone actually using this term in ordinary life.
河南宝宝
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2024-02-06T19:52:35.763Z
Also I recall one of my teachers telling us in class that 中文 properly only refers to written Chinese and 说中文 is technically incorrect even though people do use it this way. Which would mean, strictly speaking, asking someone to sing a song in 中文 is an impossibility and neither the Cantonese singer nor anybody else ought to have gotten a prize!
河南宝宝
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2024-02-07T03:06:45.080Z
@河南宝宝 I remember being introduced to the same rule in my first year – but that was in Europe, where teachers are more descriptive than prescriptive, so we were taught to ignore it and just say 说中文 like everyone else (then when I arrived in Beijing, I realised most people around me actually said 讲中文). But I definitely heard 汉语 used in normal conversation as well.
Janus Bahs Jacquet
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2024-02-07T04:53:20.473Z
I can say, even in hong kong where cantonese is most common, 中文 is usually referring to standard chinese.  Obviously that is not speaking for all people or opinions, just adding onto support that all types of chinese are context based, and theis term with its multiple interpretations is no exceptions.  Many contexts could imply mandarin ((we can't know for sure from a story))
zagrycha
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2024-02-08T08:24:22.610Z
"The Chinese variety spoken in Zhengzhou is Mandarin." haha, that is just too funny, you go there and you cannot make out a word they say. Start with this: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%B2%B3%E5%8D%97%E8%AF%9D
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T09:01:26.653Z
@Kphysics It is not Putonghua, but it is Mandarin (官话). People not understanding Newfoundland or Scottish accents does not disqualify those dialects from being English.
xngtng
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2024-02-08T14:55:09.923Z
And is Cantonese also a dialect of Mandarin? I hope not. Then what about xiangyu, is it a dialect of putonghua? Linguists say it is not. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B9%98%E8%AF%AD
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T15:08:34.500Z
中国大陸絕大部份学者将吳語、閩語、客語、粵語等漢語變體称作汉语的方言，不过也有部分歐美学者称該等變體为语言。-- Most scholars in mainland China refer to Chinese variants such as Wu , Min , Hakka , and Cantonese as dialects of Chinese, but some European and American scholars also refer to these variants as languages.
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T15:10:10.877Z
Since speakers of different branches of Chinese are often unable to understand each other (at least in spoken language), debate has arisen as to whether Wu, Min, Hakka, Cantonese, etc. are dialects or languages. -- 由於不同汉语分支的使用者（至少在口语上）通常無法互相理解，於是引起关于吴语、闽语、客語、粤语等到底是方言还是语言的争论。
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T15:12:34.403Z
Although academic circles in mainland China call Chinese varieties " dialects ", the linguistic differences within dialects are even greater than the differences between European languages, and even the differences between sub-dialects within dialects are greater than the differences between some European languages ​​(such as Min differences within the language ). Therefore, some Western scholars, based on the classification of European language mutual intelligibility , believe that Chinese varieties should be called languages ​​and belong to the Chinese family . --
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T15:13:21.127Z
雖然中國大陸學界稱漢語變體為“方言”，但方言內部的語言差異甚至大於歐洲諸語之間的差異，甚至方言內部的次方言之間的差異也大於一些歐洲語言间的差异（如閩語內部的差異）。
Kphysics
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2024-02-08T16:18:19.350Z
@Kphysics Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin, neither is Xiangyu; no serious person claim Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin, even in Mainland: many people may mistakenly or for lingo-political reasons say Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese, but no one actually argues that Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin. I don't understand the relevance to your original comment and my reply. The language spoken in most of Henan, and certainly in Zhengzhou, is Mandarin. Yes I've been there, and yes I can understand them, with difficulty, but it is still Mandarin.
xngtng
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2024-02-08T16:20:36.310Z
@Kphysics I am not sure what you are trying to convince me of. You seem to believe that I think Cantonese or other languages spoken by Han Chinese is 'just' a 'dialect'. This is not true and I never said this: the first sentence in my answer affirms that "Cantonese is *a* Chinese **language**".
xngtng
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2024-02-06T13:57:33.637Z
2024-02-06T13:57:33.637Z
xngtng
<p>I recall an incident that occurred once in (Mainland) China, which I found puzzling and intriguing.</p>
<p>It was in Zhengzhou, I think. There was some kind of sales activity where people were being given freebies, if they would come up in front of everybody and sing a song &quot;in Chinese&quot;. I don't recall why there was that qualification because apart from me everybody in the vicinity was a local.</p>
<p>Anyway, somebody got up and sang a few bars of a Hong Kong pop song. But he didn't get a prize, &quot;because I said in Chinese and you sang in Cantonese&quot;. The exact words more or less were 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话.</p>
<p>I found this really puzzling and asked about it later. It seemed to me unquestionable that Cantonese was a form of Chinese, it certainly wasn't 外语 so why did the person say that Cantonese wasn't Chinese?</p>
<p>I was given to understand that Mandarin is Chinese because it applies to the whole of China but Cantonese, whatever its origin and relation to Mandarin, is only a regional speech, not in use throughout China, and only belonging to Southern China, whereas Mandarin belongs to all of China.</p>
<p>My question is, was this person's point of view an idiosyncracy or would most Chinese agree. If you are a native speaker, would you call Cantonese &quot;Chinese&quot; or not? And why?</p>
<p>Edit: changed title to reflect actual words used, as the English word &quot;Chinese&quot; maps to multiple Chinese terms, with different implications</p>

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2024-02-08T20:11:03.840Z
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Tang Ho
<topolect>
Is Cantonese Chinese? 【广东话属于中文吗】
# Is Cantonese Chinese? 【广东话属于中文吗】

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-02-06)

I recall an incident that occurred once in (Mainland) China, which I found puzzling and intriguing.

It was in Zhengzhou, I think. There was some kind of sales activity where people were being given freebies, if they would come up in front of everybody and sing a song "in Chinese". I don't recall why there was that qualification because apart from me everybody in the vicinity was a local.

Anyway, somebody got up and sang a few bars of a Hong Kong pop song. But he didn't get a prize, "because I said in Chinese and you sang in Cantonese". The exact words more or less were 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话.

I found this really puzzling and asked about it later. It seemed to me unquestionable that Cantonese was a form of Chinese, it certainly wasn't 外语 so why did the person say that Cantonese wasn't Chinese?

I was given to understand that Mandarin is Chinese because it applies to the whole of China but Cantonese, whatever its origin and relation to Mandarin, is only a regional speech, not in use throughout China, and only belonging to Southern China, whereas Mandarin belongs to all of China.

My question is, was this person's point of view an idiosyncracy or would most Chinese agree. If you are a native speaker, would you call Cantonese "Chinese" or not? And why?

Edit: changed title to reflect actual words used, as the English word "Chinese" maps to multiple Chinese terms, with different implications

**Tags:** topolect
> **Comments:**
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## 9 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2024-02-06. Score: 10 | Accepted answer

There is no serious dispute that, in linguistic and general usage, Cantonese is a Chinese language in English, or 汉语 in Chinese.

The question is that 中文 and 华语/华文, while generally synonyms of 汉语, can carry different connotations or even has semantically narrowed in some cases.

---

First as a disclaimer, as a native speaker of Mandarin (northeastern China), I am biased towards my own usage/experience and the usage I am used to, which is necessarily incomplete give the size of China and other Chinese-speaking territories. I will first give my first impressions about this question, then clarify where I can find support from other sources.

My first impressions:

* "我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话" sounded awkward to me, but it was not clear why.
* "我说的是汉语歌而你唱的是广东话" does not sound awkward to me; but I would have immediately registered it as an incorrect statement.

Similarly, while I would say of course to "粤语是汉语", I have to think and feel I have no choice but to accept "粤语是中文" as true.

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Although here I cannot discern the difference clearly, there are clear usage differences between 中文 and 汉语 in many cases (at least in my experience): for example, you would almost always say "中文" when referring to the Chinese version of a website or book.

As the last character indicate, 中文 may put a little bit of emphasis on the written system of Chinese languages, which nowadays, in relatively formal settings, overwhelmingly correspond to the current standard variety, Mandarin. This does not preclude 中文 from being used for the oral language though, e.g. there is nothing wrong with saying 中文歌 or 中文频道。In the latter case (中文频道, Chinese channels), most TV or radio branded with 中文 would be using Mandarin. The meaning of 中文 has narrowed in some cases compared to 汉语 such that you would expect Mandarin for 中文 since 中文 is more widely used and in many usage the standard Chinese is implied by the term.

Semantic narrowing does not have to be logical or technically correct! It is common for absolute synonyms to acquire different specialized meanings or connotations for both to remain in common usage. For example, "meat" in English used to refer to all food; "man" used to mean (and still mean in some cases) all persons, not just adult males

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Going back to the incident in the question, there is another point to make.

> There was some kind of sales activity where people were being given freebies, if they would come up in front of everybody and sing a song "in Chinese". I don't recall why there was that qualification because apart from me everybody in the vicinity was a local.

I would think that they specified "Chinese" as opposed to English or another foreign language. The Chinese variety spoken in Zhengzhou is Mandarin. So while they said Chinese, they expected Mandarin. Whether Cantonese is Chinese or not is not a question people usually think about. They probably just wanted to hear something they or most of the audience could understand.

In the context of music particularly, Cantonese music (especially pop) is a very popular and distinct genre of music. While you will see 华语 is often used to refer to Chinese and "technically" lexically equivalent to 中文 (中/华+语/文), 华语歌 in my experience overwhelmingly refers to Mandarin songs.

In this context, some people may also have a narrowed sense of what count as 中文歌, since they may consider Cantonese songs to be sufficiently distinct as a group. This is a well-known source of semantic narrowing and can often happen in special cases (Macs are personal computers, too).

While I think 95%+ of Mandarin speakers would agree 粤语是汉语， I would expect a significant amount of Mandarin speakers who would not agree that 粤语歌是中文歌 **at first sight**, even if they may agree with the statement after brief reflection (or not so brief).

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I apologize that the answer is disorganized, but I also hope to share that the relationship between various dialects/topolects/languages in the group of written and oral systems of communications commonly known as Chinese is... complicated. The usage and connotations of words are also hard to discern.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks for an in-depth and detailed answer!  
> **username_0**: If 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话 sounds awkward that may be because I don't recall the exact words. It was definitely about whether 广东话 met the qualification of 中文歌 though.  
> **username_0**: Speaking of 汉语, I've only encountered this in an academic context. There is 汉语水平考试 and I had a textbook once called 现代汉语 but I don't recall anyone actually using this term in ordinary life.  
> **username_0**: Also I recall one of my teachers telling us in class that 中文 properly only refers to written Chinese and 说中文 is technically incorrect even though people do use it this way. Which would mean, strictly speaking, asking someone to sing a song in 中文 is an impossibility and neither the Cantonese singer nor anybody else ought to have gotten a prize!  
> **username_4**: @河南宝宝 I remember being introduced to the same rule in my first year – but that was in Europe, where teachers are more descriptive than prescriptive, so we were taught to ignore it and just say 说中文 like everyone else (then when I arrived in Beijing, I realised most people around me actually said 讲中文). But I definitely heard 汉语 used in normal conversation as well.  
> **username_14**: I can say, even in hong kong where cantonese is most common, 中文 is usually referring to standard chinese.  Obviously that is not speaking for all people or opinions, just adding onto support that all types of chinese are context based, and theis term with its multiple interpretations is no exceptions.  Many contexts could imply mandarin ((we can't know for sure from a story))  
> **username_15**: "The Chinese variety spoken in Zhengzhou is Mandarin." haha, that is just too funny, you go there and you cannot make out a word they say. Start with this: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%B2%B3%E5%8D%97%E8%AF%9D  
> **username_3**: @Kphysics It is not Putonghua, but it is Mandarin (官话). People not understanding Newfoundland or Scottish accents does not disqualify those dialects from being English.  
> **username_15**: And is Cantonese also a dialect of Mandarin? I hope not. Then what about xiangyu, is it a dialect of putonghua? Linguists say it is not. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B9%98%E8%AF%AD  
> **username_15**: 中国大陸絕大部份学者将吳語、閩語、客語、粵語等漢語變體称作汉语的方言，不过也有部分歐美学者称該等變體为语言。-- Most scholars in mainland China refer to Chinese variants such as Wu , Min , Hakka , and Cantonese as dialects of Chinese, but some European and American scholars also refer to these variants as languages.  
> **username_15**: Since speakers of different branches of Chinese are often unable to understand each other (at least in spoken language), debate has arisen as to whether Wu, Min, Hakka, Cantonese, etc. are dialects or languages. -- 由於不同汉语分支的使用者（至少在口语上）通常無法互相理解，於是引起关于吴语、闽语、客語、粤语等到底是方言还是语言的争论。  
> **username_15**: Although academic circles in mainland China call Chinese varieties " dialects ", the linguistic differences within dialects are even greater than the differences between European languages, and even the differences between sub-dialects within dialects are greater than the differences between some European languages ​​(such as Min differences within the language ). Therefore, some Western scholars, based on the classification of European language mutual intelligibility , believe that Chinese varieties should be called languages ​​and belong to the Chinese family . --  
> **username_15**: 雖然中國大陸學界稱漢語變體為“方言”，但方言內部的語言差異甚至大於歐洲諸語之間的差異，甚至方言內部的次方言之間的差異也大於一些歐洲語言间的差异（如閩語內部的差異）。  
> **username_3**: @Kphysics Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin, neither is Xiangyu; no serious person claim Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin, even in Mainland: many people may mistakenly or for lingo-political reasons say Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese, but no one actually argues that Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin. I don't understand the relevance to your original comment and my reply. The language spoken in most of Henan, and certainly in Zhengzhou, is Mandarin. Yes I've been there, and yes I can understand them, with difficulty, but it is still Mandarin.  
> **username_3**: @Kphysics I am not sure what you are trying to convince me of. You seem to believe that I think Cantonese or other languages spoken by Han Chinese is 'just' a 'dialect'. This is not true and I never said this: the first sentence in my answer affirms that "Cantonese is *a* Chinese **language**".  

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### Answer by username_2 on 2024-02-06. Score: 13

Wiktionary, in [its entry on 「中文」](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87#Noun), says this (uncited) in its 2nd and 3rd definitions:

> 中文
>
> 2. (*Mainland China, Taiwan, [proscribed](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#proscribed)*) Mandarin
> 3. (*Hong Kong, Macau*) Cantonese

In Sense (2), the *proscribed* note is very important. It basically means that in Mainland China and Taiwan, the word 「中文」 is commonly interpreted to mean *Mandarin*, and not any other variety of Chinese, hence the reaction from the organiser; this is in spite of authorities' recommendation against interpreting 「中文」 as *Mandarin* rather than the more general idea of *Chinese*.

Sense (3) matches my experience with Cantonese speakers - when a conversation is conducted in Cantonese, 「中文」 in a spoken sense means *Cantonese*, not *Mandarin*.

---

To sum up:

* Cantonese is definitely a variety of Chinese, nobody can seriously contest this. The English word "Chinese" broadly refers to any member of the [Sinitic languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinitic_languages).
* The situation you observed basically reveals differences in people's understanding of common words due to different cultural or social conditions. If left to evolve on their own for a long time, [cognates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate) eventually become [false friends with shared etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend#Shared_etymology). A more extreme example is the unqualified word 「國語」; this word:
  + Is not really used in Mainland China;
  + Is the most common way to refer to "Mandarin" in Taiwan;
  + Among Chinese-speaking Malaysians, it refers to the [Malay Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language);
  + In Japanese and Korean, it refers to the Japanese and Korean languages, respectively;
  + In Vietnamese, it refers to the [Vietnamese alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet).

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: I would add that in HK and Macau, Chinese predominantly is used in contrast to English/Portugese. The predominant Chinese variety there is Cantonese.  
> **username_4**: I think you’re mixing up _prescribed_ and _proscribed_. _Prescribed_ means what you describe: it’s taught and considered correct by official standards, but may not reflect actual usage. _Proscribed_ means it’s considered to be **incorrect** by some authorities, so in this case it would mean that 中文 was _not_ taught to refer specifically to Mandarin, and that such a usage would be considered incorrect by some unnamed authority.  
> **username_2**: @JanusBahsJacquet whoops - thanks for the correction! That changes the interpretation a bit, but it still means a large swathe of the population thinks 中文 = Mandarin.  
> **username_5**: Can confirm Sense 3: in all Cantonese conversations I've had, 中文 means either spoken Cantonese or written Chinese (depending on the context), rather than spoken Mandarin.  

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### Answer by username_1 on 2024-02-06. Score: 5

Cantonese is one of many Chinese dialects, Mandarin is also one of many Chinese dialects. The difference is Mandarin is the **current** official language of the entire China.

And yes! Cantonese is **a** Chinese language!

> The exact words more or less were 我说的是中文歌而你唱的是广东话.

广东歌 is also a kind of 中文歌. Mandarin is the representative of the Chinese language but it is not the only Chinese language

You can ask the same question replacing Cantonese with another Chinese dialect, my answer would be the same: "XX dialect" is also a Chinese language

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: That's exactly what I've always thought!  
> **username_1**: It is like the modern representative of "weapon" is the handgun, but you can't say only a handgun is a weapon and  a knife is not  
> **username_6**: There are multiple answers to this question, depending on whether you answer from the point of view of "historical national identity" where language was not a unifying component, or "present day political identity", where language is. An American citizen could often speak  Mandarin socially, but when asked what is American, linguistically, the answer has to be "English", linguistically speaking. So, ask a mainland Chinese, (ethnically Cantonese or Hakka), what is his national language, the answer has to be Mandarin or Putonghua. He would not say Cantonese or Hakka.  
> **username_1**: You said it - National Language -- Not Chinese language  
> **username_6**: Yes, I don't see how any Mainland Chinese could deny that Cantonese is a "Chinese Language" If Cantonese is not a "Chinese" language, then what is it? Even if it is a "dialect", is it not a Chinese dialect? That would be like saying the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan is not a Chinese language, linguistically speaking?  
> **username_7**: I would add that Mandarin, Cantonese and various other Chinese dialects are all spoken languages which share the exact same written language. The Chinese characters are all the same Chinese but they can be read out aloud in either Mandarin or Cantonese or any other dialect.  
> **username_2**: @quarague That's not correct. Speakers of all Chinese languages are encouraged from school age to write in [Modern Standard Chinese (現代標準漢語)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese) across Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They don't usually write their own language in education and official communications, but they do exist; see e.g. [Yue Wikipedia (粵文維基百科)](https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/頭版), [Wu Wikipedia (吳語維基百科)](https://wuu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=封面&variant=wuu-hant), and [Gan Wikipedia (贛語版本嗰維基百科)](https://gan.wikipedia.org/wiki/封面).  

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### Answer by username_8 on 2024-02-08. Score: 1

As a native Hongkonger, I can tell you that a local schoolkid would say "I can speak Chinese and Mandarin" or "我識講中文同普通話" for which Chinese/中文 means Cantonese in the local context.

But logically, 中文 is not a language you can speak. Literally it refers to the written language (文), not the spoken language (語). Therefore whether Cantonese is 中文, I would say no. But whether Cantonese is a Chinese, that should be yes.

Similarly speaking, if that happens in Zhengzhou, it is understandable that Chinese is exclusively Mandarin.


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### Answer by username_9 on 2024-02-06. Score: 1

Cantonese is Chinese.

After that being said, when somebody says "Chinese" in Mainland China, it is automatically assumed that Chinese refers to putonghua, particularly outside of Guangdong.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Could it be that there is another name for Chinese which is more inclusive of dialects, but 中文 is intended to mean "Standard Chinese"?  
> **username_9**: I am not aware of any such terms. Don't forget there are literally thousands of dialacts spoken in China. Cantonese is one of the biggest ones, sure. What about Chaozhou-ise? It's pretty big as well. Then there are sub-dialacts of these dialacts. I know a sub-dialact of Cantonese that sounds distinctly alien to your "standard" Cantonese.  
> **username_1**: 中文 is intended to mean "Chinese language"  
> **username_1**: @fat penguin Sub-dialects of Cantonese are still Cantonese.  They are also a Chinese language  
> **username_9**: @TangHo Is Scottish Engish?  
> **username_1**: Ask someone from The UK. I only know Canadian English and American English are English too  
> **username_0**: @fat penguin how about 华语、汉语？中国话？  
> **username_4**: @fatpenguin No, ‘Scottish’ (aka [Scottish] Gaelic, pronounced to rhyme with ‘Gallic’) is a separate language belonging to the Goidelic branch of Insular Celtic languages. ‘Scottish English’, however, is English. ;-)  

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### Answer by username_10 on 2024-02-07. Score: 0

"中文" certainly includes Cantonese.

To add an authority: In [ISO 639](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639_macrolanguage#zho) for example, there is the macrolanguage Chinese (3-letter code *zho*, presumably from "中文"). Under *zho* are 16 groups of Sinitic languages. Two of these groups are Mandarin Chinese and Yue Chinese.

So, at least by ISO 639, Yue Chinese (Cantonese) is no less Chinese or "中文" than Mandarin Chinese.

> **Comments:**
> **username_11**: All native languages used by the native people in the territory of China can be categorized as 中文 .  
> **username_0**: What about Uighur or Zhuang?  
> **username_10**: @河南宝宝: The Uighur language is *uig* in [ISO 639](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639_language_codes) and separate from Chinese *zho*. The Chinese languages are in the Sino-Tibetan family, while Uighur is in the [Turkic family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language). // The Zhuang macrolanguage is *zha* in ISO 639 (again also separate from Chinese). The [Zhuang (or Tai) languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_languages) are in the [Kra-Dai family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kra%E2%80%93Dai_languages) (which also contains Thai and Lao).  

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### Answer by username_13 on 2024-02-07. Score: 0

Cantonese is Chinese.

He just don't want to give out prize and finding excuse, such action is common practice here in my home town in China. If the men used Putonghua, he will probably ask for Zhengzhou dialect and so on. The keys is to attract people for more sales and afterward they can say they have fired the men doing this and reputation is back too.


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### Answer by username_12 on 2024-02-08. Score: -3

Technically it is an accent of Chinese that, as it clearly uses Chinese characters but on a vastly different context, despite the pronunciation system have some differences, it is still considered coherent most of the time.

It's actually quite simple to find parallels around the world -- Just think about Cantonese to (Mandarin) Chinese as Quebec French to Metropolitan French (the real French in Europe).


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### Answer by username_11 on 2024-02-07. Score: -4

Mandarin is满族话, not Chinese汉语, which is the language of Han people.
Canton means 广东 in French, but has been mistakenly used for 广州 for a long time.
华语 is a word acceptable to all Chinese around the world. 华 is actually a word that is hard to define.

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: 满族话 is [Manchurian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_language), not Mandarin. Manchurian is a completely different language (not even in the Sino-Tibetan family).  
> **username_10**: *Canton* is indeed from 广东 (gwong2 dung1) but through the Portuguese *Cantão*, not French.  
> **username_11**: @user103496 As Guangdong and Guangxi, or the Double Guangs两广， were the colony of France in the 19th century, so it was very likely Canton derived from French but not likely from Portuguese. The sphere of influecne of Portugual from that time till 1999 was in Macao, a very small island with small population.  
> **username_10**: The name Cantão or Canton obviously arose centuries before the 19th. *Since their first contacts with China in 1513, the Portuguese called the city of Guangzhou, 'Cantão' ('Canton')* http://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/20033/1289  

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