Cantonese is also known as Guangdong dialect; however, many areas in Guangdong Province do not speak Cantonese, and the areas where people do speak Cantonese are far beyond Guangdong Province. This geographic clue plays a key role in the transmission of the language. Compared with Hakka speakers living in mountainous areas and Teochew-dialect speakers living along the coastline, Cantonese speakers in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces are mainly distributed along rivers. Thus, people living at the junction areas of rivers, mountains and the sea are often bilingual. In ancient times, South China (Lingnan) was a borderland far away from the political centre of China, while in early modern times it became the front of international communications. The Cantonese-dialect area thereafter was transformed from the frontier to the forefront of China. The delicate relationship between the world, state, and local levels shapes the society, technology and cultures of this area. As the carrier of Cantonese culture bred by the Pearl River, the Cantonese language has spread down from the river to the sea and travelled across the oceans to become a language spoken by about 120 million people worldwide.

Like Cantonese integrates yayan (ancient official language) of central China, ancient Baiyue dialects and some borrowed words, the architecture of the Cantonese-dialect area is influenced by cultures from different regions. Many vernacular buildings preserved to date not only embody regional adaptability, but also retain some ancient architectural types from the north because of the governance and immigration during the Chinese dynasties. Impacts from India, southeast Asia, Arabia, Europe and North America have also left traces on the vernacular architecture. This complex bilingualism (e.g., official–folk, native–exotic, local–international, traditional–modern), and even multilingual integrations and mutual learning have emerged in the architectural styles. The various architectural sources differ from each other in morphology and technology, but permeate and cooperate with each other simultaneously.

Architecture is influenced by geography, language and society, and contributes to the constructions of landscapes, languages and societies. Folk clans have been highly developed in Guangdong Province since the Ming Dynasty.