Why learning spoken Chinese as a foreigner is easy and hard

[Quest]

Quest, what's the difference between these entries, in Mandarin both have entries in my dictionary:

Quote:

广东话[廣東話] Guǎngdōnghuà n. Cantonese speech/language

广州话[廣-話] Guǎngzhōuhuà n. Cantonese speech

Someone corrected me when I used one of them but I have no idea what the difference is. Which one is more common (correct?) by Mandarin speakers and which one by Cantonese speakers>

Personally, I think 广州话 is more correct if you refer to the dialect spoken in Guangzhou, Hongkong and Macau, but since it's no longer a Guangzhou only language, maybe people nowadays would think 广东话 would be more appropriate, but then again there's only a handful places in Guangdong (maybe fewer) that speak the dialect, 屈指可数. So, 广东话 is in fact a misnomer. It's like calling 北京话 河北话。In guangzhou, I think you would hear 广州话 or 白话 more often, while in Hongkong 广东话 is more common. To outsiders, all guangdong dialects are the same, so 广东话 is the one used by Mandarin speakers. Linguistically, maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to 广州话 as 广东话的广州/广府方言。In everyday usage, they are synonyms, but depending on where you are, one's usage is preferred over the other.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BF%E5%B7%9E%E8%AF%9D

广州话又稱廣府話、省城話、白話等，是粤语的公认标准音。流行于广州、香港、澳門，珠江三角州广府地区、清远也有一部分人使用广州话。在香港普遍被稱廣東話，但這個稱呼用在語言學分類上會顯得不夠確切。

[Ncao]

Quest

Do you know why people in Guangzhou call Cantonese 白話?

[atitarev]

Thanks, Quest

[Quest]

Quest

Do you know why people in Guangzhou call Cantonese 白話?

In [Cantonese] parts of Guangdong and Guangxi, some people also call 广州话 白話。It just means "a language that can be understood" = 广州话.

[selfconstruct]

煲冬瓜好辛苦