mother tongue is the language one learns from birth. my family use mandarin and teochew. so, what is surprising here, mandarin and teochew as my mother tongue???
I have recently been to a tour in GuangDong. I have always pride myself as a Cantonese and I was surprised to find that most of the Cantonese are not from the region.
The real Cantonese are relatively smaller, with darker complexion and small eyes. Most of us have ancestors from the Northern part of China. The fact is that our ancestors have merged into the society of Southern China.
One good example is the Hakkas. In Chinese means "guest". They migrated down south in the later stage and were normads, thus given the name "Hakka". Still Hakka is one of the 3 main dialects in the Guang Dong area other than Zhuang Zhu and Cantonese.
Even for Cantonese, there are a large variety. My ancester home is in Xin Hui and when I went to Kai Ping for instance, I have trouble understanding their Cantonese although they are speaking the same dialect. Same thing with Xin Ling, the Cantonese is again different. Singapore version is very similar to that from Hong Kong and Guang Zhou.
Similarly, the Hokkien also have different variations. I at least know 2, one of Singapore version from Fu Jian, the other Fu Zhou (unless I am mistaken). For those who have heard Fu Zhou version, they will think that Singaporean's
Hokkien is really gentle.
Just one more clarification, many here seem to have quote Guang Zhou as the province. In fact, Guang Zhou is the main city of Guang Dong, which is the province. West of Guang Dong is Guang Xi while East is Fu Zhou.