Chaoshan dialect is the prevailing dialect in the Chaoshan area, including Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang. The dialect spoken by Shantou residents is called Shantou dialect. Chaozhou dialect is a branch of Minnan dialect, which bears great differences from modern Chinese. It not only retains a lot of phonemes, tones, vocabularies and grammatical features of ancient Chinese and many substratum words of ancient Taiwan dialect, but also borrows words from Malaysian and English. Some Hakkas in Shantou also speak Hakka dialect.

                                                                                       Source: Shantou Almanac 2008

　　地方方言为潮汕话。潮汕话流行于汕头、潮州、揭阳等市所在的潮汕一带地区，汕头市讲的叫汕头话。潮汕话属于闽南方言的一个支系，与现代汉语有较大的差异。它保存着大量的古汉语语音、声调、词汇及语法特点，也保存着不少古台语底层词，有不少马来语或英语借词。境内少数客家居民也用客家话。

信息来源：《汕头年鉴（2008）》