Waitau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waitau, or Waitau Wah (Traditional Chinese: 圍頭話; Simplified Chinese: 围头话; literally "walled (village) language"), can refer generally to any Chinese language/dialect spoken in the villages of Shenzhen and Hong Kong in southern China, including Hakka and Cantonese variants, in contrast to Standard Cantonese (Guangfu) spoken by the majority of Hong Kong and Shenzhen residents.

In a specific sense, however, Waitau is a distinct dialect of Cantonese. According to some linguistic classification schemes, Waitau form part of the Dongguan-Bao'an sub-zone (莞寶片) of the Cantonese dialect zone (粵方言區). It is spoken by the older generations in Shenzhen, and by those in the New Territories, Hong Kong.

Waitau can be heard in Hong Kong TV dramas and movies, and is usually used to characterise characters who come from walled villages. For example, in the 1992 movie Now You See Love ... Now You Don't (我愛扭紋柴), the chief character, played by Chow Yun-Fat who himself grown up in Lamma Island, consistently speaks the Waitau language.

[edit] References

• (Chinese) 張雙慶、莊初昇，《香港新界方言》，香港：商務印書館，2003。
• (Chinese) 黄建全，《深圳平湖围头话音系分析》，2005。
• (Chinese) 《深圳方言分布》，深圳新闻网。