Taishanese

Taishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 臺山話; pinyin: Táishān huà; Jyutping: toi4 saan1 waa2), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisanwa, is a Yue Chinese language native to Taishan, Guangdong. Even though they are related, Taishanese has little mutual intelligibility with Cantonese, and is not a dialect of Cantonese but a separate Yue language. Taishanese is also spoken throughout Sze Yup (or Siyi in the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese), located on the western fringe of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, China. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, most of the Chinese immigration to North America originated in Sze Yup (which includes Taishan). Thus, up to the mid-20th century, Taishanese was the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.