Mandarin or Cantonese?
March 22nd, 2012 | 
Author: This is a reply to one of our visitors, James S., a 1st year business student from Australia and am looking to study a language to further my eventual business career.
James, please send us your email address using this form at http://chinesebay.com/blog/contact-us/contact-chinesebay/
These questions and answers may be interested to him:
Mandarin or Cantonese?
1.Which is the hardest? Cantonese: more tones to master, less learning materials, too many phonetic systems to pick from.
2. Which is more common? Mandarin: more speakers, and it is the standard or official Chinese and even people in Hong Kong and other Cantonese speakers are learning it.
3. Which should I learn first? If you have a choice, choose Mandarin. If you have Cantonese girl friend and her parents speak Cantonese only. Then you have no choice but Cantonese 
http://cantonesepod.com/pods/2012/03/12/diffference-mandarin-cantonese/
The major differences between Mandarin and Cantonese
The differences between Mandarin & Cantonese
Althought Mandarin and Cantonese may share many Chinese characters, we can find
the following major differences between these two languages:
1. Very different pronunciation.
e.g. 你好（hello)
Mandarin：ní hǎo Cantonese: nei5 hou2
e.g. 火車(train)
Mandarin: huo3 che1 Cantonese: fo2 ce1
2. Mandarin 4 tones vs Cantonese 6 tones
e.g.
Mandarin 師時史是 shī shí shĭ shì
Cantonese 師史試時市是 si1 si2 si3 si4 si5 si6
Mandarin 湯糖躺燙 tāng táng tăng tàng
Cantonese 湯躺燙糖 tong1 tong2 tong3 tong4
3. different characters or words are used
e.g. Engligh: I like him
Mandarin 我喜歡他
Cantonese 我中意佢
4. different word order
e.g. Engligh: I need to go first.
Mandarin 我要先走了。
Cantonese 我要走先了。
Posted in Cantonese vs Mandarin