Hi Ceasar, A major difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is the pronunciation. Both languages are being pronounced differently even if they use almost the same written characters (and some exceptions of course). Cantonese is deemed to be more complex because it has six tones and uses several oral expressions whereas Mandarin only has four tones with less special expressions. Cantonese can even have 9 unique tones. Because both depend on tone so much, each word (even with the same sound) is different in each language if pronounced in a different tone. It is like how you imagine the chicken talking to the duck wherein they belong to the same bird family but will surely have a hard time understanding one another. The vowels and consonants of both languages somewhat vary as well.

mandarin is not equal to standard Chinese. the dialect of mandarin around North of China,especially in Beijing, is almost equal to standard Chinese,which we use to communicate with each other all over China when we can't understand their own language. mandarin has its own dialect such as the one spoken in Southwest. Cantonese is a language,or a dialect as we often say in China, used in some region in South of China. The spokers of the two languages,mandarin and cantonese, can't understand each other if they can only speak their own language. But they use the same writting system,so that they can communicate by writting if the spoker of Cantonese want. Cantonese is different from mandarin in pronounciation,tone and expression.But the vowels and consonant may used in Cantonese can be implied according to mandarin sometimes.

what is a language? what is a dialect? is mandarin a language or a dialect? is cantonese a language or a dialect? i'd like to suggest one read these articles first at wikipedia. 漢語 http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E or chinese language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

Manderin is almost equal to standard Chinese. Cantonese is only a dialect of South China，such as Guangdong and HongKong.

hi, as a matter of fact, "Mandarin" is the official language and spoken all across China, while "Cantonese" is the dialect of Chinese spoken in Canton and neighboring provinces and in Hong Kong and elsewhere outside China. :)