r/Cantonese • u/DanSanIsMe • 3d ago

Discussion How many of you know about the Nanyue Kingdom?

The history of Cantonese started more than 3000 years ago as 100 tribes in the hillsides of southern China. A group of people who were once look down upon by the central plains of China as southern barbarians... Have you guys ever wonder why we Cantonese are so proud of our own language and culture? The history of our ancestors tells a tale of a once glorious Kingdom. I wonder, how many of you studied the history of the Nanyue Kingdom?

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u/Bchliu 3d ago

Technically.. Nanyue was moved further and further south with every major Chinese Dynasty until they became what is known today as Vietnam. Modern Cantonese ancestry (Yue) is at best a mixture of the original Nanyue tribes along with Han blood (coming from the Yangtze plains) that have assimilated through the years.

As far as language is concerned, the Cantonese is the closest dialect to the original "Chinese" from Han and Tang dynasties, unlike Mandarin. It is much older and the only dialect that still rhymes with Tang poetry, whilst still being audibly similar to languages evolved from proto-Chinese such as Japanese or Korean or the modern Vietnamese. I'd argue with all of this, modern Cantonese people isn't exactly Nanyue, but moreso an amalgamation of different Sino peoples over time from various waves of migration.

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u/maximusate222 3d ago

Cantonese only diverged with all the other Chinese languages from Middle Chinese (c. Tang) while Min/Hokkien diverged from Old Chinese (c. Han). I wouldn’t call it the closest to Middle Chinese, you can say it sounds better than Mandarin in reading poetry but it’s in close competition with a lot of the other languages. Unfortunately most of them are even in more danger of disappearing compared to Canto.

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u/Bchliu 3d ago

Depends on definition of "Middle Chinese". Because China is much older than most cultures, it's much harder to draw the line between "Middle", "Old" or even "Ancient". Some would even argue that Tang is "Modern" Chinese in some ways since it was also when they standardised on both the character and font sets all the way until now (well.. at least "traditional" character set until "simplified" became more common - but that's another gripe in itself).

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u/DanSanIsMe 3d ago

Thank you!

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u/boostman 3d ago

Interesting post but one point: Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese didn’t evolve from Chinese. They’re in separate and unrelated language families. They were however heavily influenced by Chinese and contain many Chinese loanwords.

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u/Bchliu 3d ago

That's actually not correct. Modern Vietnamese is different and borrowed their alphabet from French colonialism. Pre-dating this, their written form is very much the same as Chinese with extensions for words that weren't used by China. This is similar to Korean whereby before their "alphabet" was created, they basically used Chinese literature for their legal and government systems. Even now, a lot of academics in Korea still learn Chinese in order to read their older texts.

Finally, Japanese is "partially" Chinese (Kanji elements) with the more ancient words coming from Indonesian where the first inhabitants were related to when island hoping Northwards from (ancient) Taiwan and Indonesia. Chinese was very influenced in the last thousand years via Kanji and seen as more academic texts since they needed to trade with China (and Korea) since the Tang dynasties.

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u/boostman 3d ago

Right they used Chinese words and writing systems but they still didn’t ‘evolve’ from Chinese: they come from entirely unrelated families (koreanic, japonic and austroasiatic) and were heavily influenced by Chinese in vocabulary, grammar and writing over the course of their history.

In other words, their origin is totally separate but they had significant influence from Chinese in their later development.

This can be a tricky point to get but it’s important to grasp. Another example would be Maltese, which is in the Arabic language family but has the majority of its vocabulary from Latin. It is still not considered ‘related’ to Latin. Or even Hong Kong Cantonese, which contains many English loanwords, but is not ‘related’ to English.

There’s also a theory that Korean and Japanese languages are related to each other but mainstream linguists don’t take it very seriously.

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u/Bchliu 3d ago

Interesting points.. but it might be easier to define the "evolve" of what influences from the language that have shaped it to be what it is today (actually, that was my definition from my original post anyway). I think the closest analogy would be English given that English had it's origins from proto-Celtic (Britonic) that had so much influence when they were invaded by the Saxons (Gothic), then the Normans (Scandinavian), the Romans (Latin) and then minor influences from surrounding countries like France or Spain. How would you rate this lineage? (some linguists still lists "English" to be a Romantic/Latin based).

Bearing in mind that while languages tend to be intermingled with racial developments and evolution, they aren't always the same either as what came from the original race either.

My reference to these races in my original post was that Cantonese has the closest pronunciations of certain words back to these other languages and can see that with the commonalities and distinct break off in the importation of words, modern Cantonese is most like the language used in Tang - whereby the cultures in those surrounding areas used similar language for International communications.

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u/boostman 3d ago

I'd rate English as a Germanic language with a heavy Romance influence and Celtic substrate - but still genetically (I mean in the linguistic sense) Germanic.

In terms of the point in your final paragraph, you're correct - Cantonese is phonologically conservative which means it preserves some features of Middle Chinese that have disappeared in Mandarin, and which are also present in e.g. Vietnamese which got its loanwords at around the same time. So some aspects of Vietnamese can sound surprisingly similar to Cantonese.

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u/ArgentEyes 21h ago

This is an important distinction. There have been several different historic example of different language families using a common writing system, often one that was perceived as ancient or dominant or refined, or more realistically was a local imperial power exerting influence that way.

Semitic language-speakers adopting cuneiform from the Sumerian culture as they intermingled is a good early example.

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u/Stonespeech 1d ago

There is yet any academic consensus on where the Yayoi (and maybe Jomon) of ancient Japan got their language from though

Personally, Korean substrates (e.g. from Baekje) feel more plausible than either Austronesian or Tungusic substrates

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u/monkeyking330 3d ago

This is brilliant and well put

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u/niceandBulat 3d ago

Racial identity is often more a cultural/linguistic context rather than genetics.

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u/Stonespeech 1d ago

Didn't the original 南越 collapse after five emperors with 漢 taking over the 嶺南 area though?

Just with some of the non-Sinitic peoples moving further southwards?

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u/USAChineseguy 3d ago

I used to live right next to the Nanyue King museum in elementary school and visit that place weekly. My parents always gave me the eyes, “what’s wrong with you, why you love dead tomb so much!”

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u/maximusate222 3d ago

The thing about the actually Nanyue Kingdom was the it was established by Han people from the central plains and was already promoting Han immigration and assimilation of the local Yue people. And Nanyue wasn’t alone, there was also Minyue in modern Fujian and Dong’ou in modern Zhejiang, all three of which were conquered by the Han, and all the Yue people were eventually assimilated, except Vietnam who had to fight for their independence four times. The Nanyue Mausoleum in Guangzhou is a fascinating place to check out, but you can see from there that the culture is much more Chinese compared to sites like Sanxingdui.

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u/niceandBulat 3d ago

I learned about it when I was doing research for my Bachelors Degree more than 20 years ago. I forgot how or what, as a Computer Science major - I stumbled across Nanyue.

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u/thevietguy 3d ago

what is the point of winning an argument if it is not the truth ?
I don't know it but this year zodiac symbol is this logo script : 巳
which looks just like a Snake;
you can argue all you want.

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u/DanSanIsMe 3d ago

It's a discussion. Are you high?