KAN-HAKKA LANGUAGES

Chinese spoken primarily in Kiangsi and Kwangtung provinces but also spoken in Fukien province and in other widely scattered areas, including settlements in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The best known of these languages is the Hakka of Mei county in Kwangtung, which has the same initial and final consonants and the same syllabic nasal sounds (nasals that function as vowels) as standard Cantonese but has a vowel system resembling that of Modern Standard Chinese. Hakka, like Cantonese, has six tones to distinguish meaning between words or word elements with the same series of consonants and vowels. Kan-Hakka languages have borrowed many words from Cantonese.