Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun Chinese dialect spoken in the greater Toi San area of Guangdong Province, China; a dialect of Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
  • noun A person who speaks the dialect of Toisanese
  • noun A person from the area; or descended from people of the area of greater Toi San in Guangdong Province, China
  • adjective pertaining to the area of greater Toi San of Guangdong Province, China; its people; their descendants; the main dialect of the region

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Toi San +‎ -ese. From the Guandonghua Cantonese pronouncation from Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou for 台山 (Toi San/Toi-San/Toi-san/Toisan)

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Examples

  • An immigrant himself in the post-1965 wave, Choi grew up in Chinatown and also speaks Toisanese and Mandarin.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • In "The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother," William Poy Lee lends his family's coming-to-America story a fresh twist by structuring the book in an unusual way.

    SeeLight: 2007

  • When we met, he asked, in Toisanese dialect, where my family was from.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • In the factory where my paw-paw worked, all of the seamstresses were women; almost everyone was from Guangdong, and almost everyone spoke Cantonese or Toisanese.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • Because in my native tongue, Toisanese, it was very different.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • “New York has a lot of Toisanese people,” he said in response.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • The labor patterns, then, have changed because the skills required on the job have changed, and the Toisanese are no longer last on the worker totem pole.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • One of the Toisanese women burst out, “Eight months!”

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • Since so many new immigrants now come from other regions of China, I was surprised to find an almost exclusively Toisanese employee pool.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

  • A little over half of the students in the class were middle-aged men and women who chatted in Toisanese.

    American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui 2009

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