Written colloquial Yue is a distinct written language from written
standard Chinese, it has a literature, a body of readers who are not
necessarily literate in standard Chinese. The Guangzhou dialect of Yue
Chinese has literature which includes opera texts, poetry, novels and
historical material dating back to the Ming dynasty. Since World War II
it has increased in usage and popularity, particularly with its use to
join together Chinese communities through out both the Pacific Rim and
in North America, as well as its role in economically open Hong Kong.
It however does not have a standardized form, thought the Hong Kong
government has produced a standardized set of characters. According to
Chan, "it has never been the subject of perscriptive reforms", which is
to say, there is no standardization process towards a single written
language.
There will be strong opposition from those who want to see Chinese
remain a system of languages with a standardized written form, at the
same time, the use of Colloquial Written Yue is a documentable fact,
needing only the desire to create a standardized form which all users
of Cantonese can recognize. However, this is not currently the case -
there is a major dialectical division within Yue itself, which produces
spoken forms which are not mutually intelligible - not uncommon for
languages with large illiterate populations - but which are
grammatically unified. However, the main reason for CWY is to represent
sounds of words.
This is a different case from the Western Colloquial Arabic: there is a
written language for Yue, but one which has several written "dialects",
some of which are confusing to the other users of it. There is, as of
yet, no single "authoritative" source for what "written" Cantonese
looks like. However, it is close - there are classes which require
written fluency in Cantonese taught at Universities, and there has been
an explosion of linguistic research. There are wide areas of common
usage, including pronouns, for example.
This is a pure judgment call, how close to having a standardized
“language” is close enough? Is the growth of CWY an artifact of Hong
Kong being separate from the mainland? Or is it the result of a long
culture centered around an economically vibrant area which has often
been separate from, or at odds with, the central government(s).
A wiktionary and wikipedia would almost certainly be part of the
process of study of the language, and might well be followed by
linguists interested in the process itself.
Chan, Thomas "Orthographic Change: Yue Chinese Dialect Characters in
the 19th and 20th Centuries"
Matthews, Stephen and Yip, Virginia _Cantonese: A Comprehensive
Grammar_, Routledge, 1994
Snow, Donald _Cantonese as Written Language_, Honk Kong University
Press, 2004.
Zheng, Dingou _Jinri Yueyu_ (Today's Cantonese), Jinan University Press