Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language of the Sino-Tibetan family. Although Hongkongers refer to the language as "Cantonese" (廣東話), publications in mainland China describe the variant as Hong Kong dialect (香港廣東話), due to the differences between the pronunciation used in Hong Kong Cantonese and that of the Cantonese spoken in neighbouring Guangdong Province where Cantonese (based on the Guangzhou dialect) is a lingua franca. Over the years, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed foreign terminology and developed a large set of Hong Kong-specific terms. Code-switching with English is also common. These are the result of British rule between 1841 and 1997, as well as the closure of the Hong Kong–mainland China border immediately after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Source: Wikipedia (en)