Cantonese is spoken by an estimated 73 million people worldwide. It remains hugely influential and a source of great pride-especially for its speakers in Hong Kong, where it flourishes as the predominant language and so sets Hong Kong apart linguistically from all of mainland China. The ABC Cantonese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, the first and most authoritative reference of its kind to be published in the last forty years, comprises about 15,000 lexical entries that are unique to the colloquial Cantonese language as it is spoken and written in Hong Kong today. Author Robert S. Bauer, a renowned lexicographer and authority on Cantonese, has utilized language documentation resources to the fullest extent by gathering material firsthand from dictionaries, glossaries, and grammars; newspapers and magazines; government records; cartoons and comic books; film and television; websites; and native speakers striding the sidewalks of Hong Kong to capture concretely contemporary Cantonese.
