An-lâm (Cantonese On-naam) was common usage for all of Vietnam in Hokkien up until the 50's I think. I'm pleased to hear that some people are still using it! The French used Annam to refer only to the middle of modern Vietnam, this was their own idiosyncratic usage, it formerly referred to the whole of what is now modern Vietnam. (was this mentioned on another thread? I think it was.....sorry, but I;m going to put it here!)
I always find that Kwongsai and western Kwongtung are great contexts for finding out the true nature of anything Paak-wa-related, and put any armchair theory to the test. If I'm not mistaken, most of the "Cantonese" spoken there is much more similar to Canton Cantonese than Seiyap is, and the people call it Paak-wa. There are places where different types of Cantonese are spoken side by side, even different types of Paak-wa... If I'm not mistaken, the whole "Cantonese" family of languages may have sprung up somewhere around what is now the Kwongsai-Kwongtung border?
The geography of language in Kwongtung/southern Kwongsai is influenced by the rivers, all of the city dialects along the southern tributaries of the West River (Wu-chow, Kwei-p'ing, Heng-chow, Nanning) speak a kind of Cantonese that is easily understood in Canton. The migration of Cantonese traders inland began during the Ming and continued up to the late Ch'ing along these rivers. Away from the rivers you get varieties of P'ing-hua 平話 (supposedly a sub-family all of its own), and 勾漏 kou-lou Cantonese, both of these are scholarly classifications, not used in ordinary people's speech.
The common usage for these sorts of Chinese is 土白話 t'o-paak-wa, "local paak-wa" but many of them have their own names, like "Sugar cane yard talk" 蔗園話 che-yuan-hua (spoken half-way between Nanning and the VNese border and 地佬話 ti-lao-hua "local people's speech" (spoken in Po-pai) which was the native tongue of the Chinese linguist Wang Li. There are a bunch of Hakka settlements too, and one group of Min speakers in a place called P'ing-lo 平樂.
It isn't that Cantonese began in the Kwongtung/Kwongsai border area, but rather that the Cantonese of Canton was strongly influenced by other northern varieties and became an aberration. The varieties to the south-west of Canton aways from the rivers were descended from earlier speech from Canton that began to be used in the area in Sung times. After this time the "new" Cantonese of Canton developed, and these areas reatined the older forms.......At least, this was the explanation given by Li Chin-fang 李錦芳 in his "Tung-t'ai yu-yen yu wen-hua 侗台語言與文化, it makes a lot of sense to me, as the Kwongtung/Kwangsai border area people were still described as using completely different languages in the Sung geographies.
PS. Who *is* this weirdo who posts single-line extracts from other people's posts as his own, ending with a smiley, and without (hardly) advertising anything? Some psychologically disturbed person seeking attention...? I've submitted them all as "off topic" in any case. Hopefully the moderators will act in a reasonable time-frame.
I don't know who he is, but let his lam-pha drop off and be eaten by dogs! (Sorry for the crudity, but that was the first thing that came to mind!)
. In essence, some of what you say I could glean from the Wikipedia article on Cantonese and various others linked to starting from there, but having 3 people whom I trust and respect flesh out the skeleton with details and lots of additional information was very rewarding reading.
, we can continue with our beloved Hokkien