The two best-known and most-spoken variants of Chinese are Mandarin and Cantonese.
Mandarin
Mandarin is the most widely spoken form of Chinese. Mandarin is unique in that it is the official language of Taiwan and mainland China, where it is spoken by between 70 and 80 percent of the population.
Cantonese
Cantonese is spoken by the people of Hong Kong, Macau and the wider Guangdong province, including Guangzhou. Compared to other major Chinese languages, Cantonese retains more aspects of Ancient Chinese. Its various dialects also have at least six tones, as opposed to the four tones in Modern Standard Chinese, which allows speakers to distinguish between words or word elements with the same arrangement of consonant and vowel sounds.
Differences between Mandarin and Cantonese
Mandarin uses simplified Chinese characters while Cantonese uses traditional Chinese characters
Cantonese uses the Jyutping romanization system while Mandarin uses Pinyin
Mandarin uses more simplified characters than Cantonese, making it more appropriate for beginners.