Cantonese (; Yale: "Gwóngdūng wá") is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) and its surrounding area in Southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group, which has over 80 million native speakers. While the term "Cantonese" specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible languages and dialects such as Taishanese.