The following aspects are very important.
After Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty, people were strongly encouraged to enter Guangxi to cultivate crops (in fact, it was pioneering), and a large number of Guangdong farmers moved to Guilin. Also during the Yongzheng period, merchants from eastern Guangdong and Jiangxi gathered, including Hunan merchants who sold salt. Because the Lijiang River (Pearl River system) can be used for water transportation, the Lijiang Wharf became a famous salt street in the late Qing Dynasty.
Among the foreign businessmen entering Guilin, there are Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Yunnan, Guizhou and other places, among which Guangdong businessmen are the most.
Manchu and Hui mostly entered as officials or soldiers. At that time, as elites, most of them lived near towns and most of them were integrated into the people of Guilin.
During the Ganjia period, the Hui people still centered on Guilin (then the provincial capital) and nearby Lingui, Lingchuan, Yongfu and Luzhai. Throughout the Qing Dynasty, there were people who moved from Hebei, Gansu, Yunnan, Guangdong, Hunan and other places for official business, garrison, refuge, business, lectures and other reasons (Fu, Li, He, Weng, etc.).
From the late Qing Dynasty to the Anti-Japanese War, due to frequent wars, a large number of immigrants from Hunan and Guangdong entered. So now Guilin people can say that the descendants of Hunan people and Cantonese people can account for more than 1/3 respectively. So it is not surprising that Guilin dialect has a lot of Hunan and Guangdong flavors. For example, the word "Ke" and "Na" of "Kenakai" and "Manglanggu" are like Quanzhou (formerly Hunan) dialect, and the word "Xian" is pronounced as "Han" like Cantonese. Even Guilin people draw their fists in Cantonese when drinking (commonly known as Ma Guang).
In addition, the garrison troops in Guilin, officials of all sizes (many of them are family members and servants) and people who moved in because of refuge and relegation also played a great role in the formation of Guilin dialect. Space is limited, so I won't say much.
Before liberation, Guilin has always been the capital of Guangxi (political, economic, military and cultural center), so many people from the north and the Central Plains settled near Guilin, resulting in a small proportion of indigenous people in Guilin (including Liuzhou, which is very close), which is very different from dialects (different in population composition) in southern Guangxi and western Guangxi. Generally speaking, Guilin dialect, like Sichuan dialect, belongs to the northern language family.
The above is my personal opinion for your reference, hehe.