Karen speaking Cantonese

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This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell and Nawang Tsering in New York City, USA. Cantonese is the most widely spoken variety of Yue Chinese, which is the mother tongue of as many as 60,000,000 worldwide. It is primarily spoken in the Guangzhou region of southern China, as well as the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, where it is an official language. A member of the Sino-Tibetan language family and closely related to other mainland Chinese varieties, Cantonese emerged as a result of cultural exchange between speakers of Medieval Chinese and indigenous Tai languages between the seventh and tenth centuries CE. Today, Cantonese is among as many as nine dialect groups of Yue throughout the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Since the rise of Cinema and popular music in Hong Kong in the mid twentieth century, there has been a lively media culture in Cantonese, making it among the most wide-reaching Chinese languages, second only to Mandarin.

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