Rarely did Chinese women marry Portuguese; initially, mostly Goans, Ceylonese (from today's Sri Lanka), Indochinese, Malay, and Japanese women were the wives of the Portuguese men in Macau. Japanese girls would be purchased in Japan by Portuguese men. Many Chinese became Macanese simply by converting to Catholicism, and had no ancestry from Portuguese, having assimilated into the Macanese people. The majority of the early intermarriages of people from China with Portuguese were between Portuguese men and women of Tanka origin, who were considered the lowest class of people in China and had relations with Portuguese settlers and sailors, or low-class Chinese women. Western men were refused by high-class Chinese women, who did not marry foreigners, while a minority were Cantonese men and Portuguese women. Macanese men and women also married with the Portuguese and Chinese, and as a result some Macanese became indistinguishable from the Chinese or Portuguese population. Because the majority of the population who migrated to Macau were Cantonese, Macau became a culturally Cantonese speaking society; other ethnic groups became fluent in Cantonese. Most Macanese had paternal Portuguese heritage until 1974. It was in the 1980s that Macanese and Portuguese women began to marry men who defined themselves ethnically as Chinese.