Vietnamese and Cantonese were highly disputed to be related in ancient times because Viet means Yue and Canto also means Yue as well. In Chinese, Yue Nan means Vietnam
"Han Chinese wasn't originated from Guangdong/Guangxi area of China, they originated from Yellow river, which means central China.Just as Yue wasn't Han Chinese, they were forced to join Han Chinese, and slowly assimilated into Han population. Mandarin was invented by Han Chinese under Manchu order, that's why they sound different from Cantonese."
Cantonese orginated from massive immigration of han populations all across china, and absorbed the yue while going into guangdong, yet yue concentration is still very low. No cantonese i've spoken too consider themselves Viet.
Cantonese and mandarin and other chinese dialects are a continium of Old Chinese, its like latin spread out across southern europe with french,spanish,italian,romanian branching off, although speakers can't understand each other's language, their languages are very close with latin. Cantonese does not have viet words, any similarites is because cantonese was the closest chinese dialect and influenced vietnamese. Mandarin actually evolved in around 1000-1500AD Search up Zhongyuan Yinyun
"Btw, there isn't enough evidence to support Cantonese people are Han Chinese. Just from their physical appearance they are actually more closely related to Vietnamese than Han Chinese."
"European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 23 January 2008; doi: 10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201998
This post has been edited by tankerbell12345: Mar 15 2012, 05:03 PM
Cantonese and vietnamese same origin, assimilated into han chinese