Cantonese!!! Because it is so much more fun to say... and it is harder to learn. So if u know Cantonese already, it is much easiler to learn Mandarin. (at least its easier than the other way around).

I speak both and prefer Canto in conversations and Mando in songs. I agree with whoever said swearing sounds funnier in Canto.

cantonese is awesome yo... curses, slangs

mandarin is too formal for everyday use

I like madarin more than canto. canto for conversations and mandarin for songs

You're probably right... my dad's side of the family all speak Cantonese, and they all picked up Mandarin easily and quickly when they met my mom... She lived in Taiwan so she speaks Mandarin. My mom's Cantonese sucks, lol. But mine does too so blush ...

I prefer Mandarin, because it sounds lovelier... =)

mandarin is by far the better language because over a billion more people speak it, it sounds alot better and all the cool taiwanese groups sing in it, cantonese especially modern colloquial hk cantonese sounds really bad and is basically useless outside of the hong kong/shenzhen region, whereas mandarin is commonly used on the mainland, taiwan, singapore and in many overseas chinese communities such as in australia

I speak Cantonese with my grandparents but I prefer Mandarin because it souns really beautiful when spoken properly.. . and more polite as well... hahaha

I speak canto.. but I was born in china.. therefore I was force to learn manderin...
if I had to choose between these two languages.. I would prefer Cantonese!

YAY canto is winning, quite unexpected. Most people don't know this but Cantonese is actually closer to ancient and Middle Chinese than Mandarin. Mandarin as a Chinese dialect was heavily influenced by the intermixing of the nomadic peoples who constantly invaded and sometimes conquered China.

i learn canto when i am in primary school when all of my frens r speakin it..
mandarin can b said as my native language...my mum n dad speaks mandarin wit me..
i would prefer canto more than mandarin..i jz dunno y...
if it's abt songs n all..i would prefer mandarin more than canto..not tat much into canto music..

i speak cantonese naturally and it is quite a cool language but i hate mandarin so difficult to learn it is very stupid i think !

mmm i would say canto is what i prefer b/c i think its b/c i learnt it first lol

I prefer Cantonese because it's a whole lot easier to speak than Mandarin. The words are more spread out on sounds than Mandarin, for example: Si Shi & Sei Sup. I guess speaking Cantonese is more simple, and not as easy to get confused when speaking too fast. Just my opinion.

I like Canto better. But i think its actually easier to learn how to speak mandarin because of the entire pingyin system. And i think its very important to learn mandarin since most of the Chinese population speaks mandarin.

canto's full has the harsh sounding words and sounds pretty screwed if not said right, but its still good, though i prefer mando its much more suttle and calming, expecaillt taiwanese mando

I speak both...learned Mando in school but my family speaks Canto. I think Mando is definitely more poetic sounding...and definitely much easier to learn because the pronunciations are more clear-cut and PLUS there's a proper pinyin system, but Canto is softer in sound. Mando is sharp, Canto sounds like water. Personally I prefer Canto cause it's more natural to me than Mando, but funnily enough I've a better grasp of Mando.

i definitely like cantonese more b/c that's the only chinese language that i know. plus it sounds good

I like Cantonese because it's easier to speak.. and it's my first language so I'm naturally biased Mandarin is much more polite-sounding and formal, and I like how it flows when you speak it.. but I still prefer Canto -- I like the all the slang that we have. ^^

Mando is official language mostly speak in China and cantonese is traditional (old) language mostly speak in Hong Kong, cantonese sound much better than mando from my opinion

i think canto is better because i suck at mando..and that i'm a big fan of tvb.

Well, i learned cantonese first and am better at it so i'm gonna go with cantonese. It just seems like its more relaxed and less structured. Then again, i learned mandarin in classes so i only know how to speak it using formal structures. I do really hate how often you make the "er" sound though with your tongue curled. It just doesn't sound real pleasant, especially if you have one of those accents where you don't pronounce the words and is constantly "er"ing. Native mandarin speakers also sound so high pitched. Its like they got kicked in the balls... I'm not trying to offend anyone, but thats just how it sounds lilke to me. anyways, i love all my chinese brothers and sisters regardless of what you speak. Chinese Pride, represent!!!!

I think that's because you learnt to speak canto before mandarin. (I think)

I've been speaking canto since I was a child and I like the language actually. Mandarin for me is like.... norwegian.

i know canto first and picked up abit of mandarin in school, i think if u didnt kno either, mandarin is easier, largely due to the fewer tones. And like wat most other said, sounds smoother and less harsh. i cant seem to understand mainland mandarin very well, tho seems easier with the ppl from malaysia/singarpore. is the mandarin different there?

of course canto la.......especially i'm a canto.....lol. i do speak mandarin, juz for no reason, juz don't like it that much. i watch canto drama from hk, but hardly watch any mandarin drama from china, singapore, or taiwan.

I prefer speaking canto because it has a more modern flava to it. I think it's important to know mandarin because so many people speak it. I started to learn
Cantonese first which I found really dificult but once I started to know the concept of a tonal language then Mandarin wasn't as hard to try to learn.

i prefer mando better, cos i can speak mando better and when i watch tvb, th ecanto sometimes sortve annoy me >;[

well it matter on the dialect. cantonese i really don't like hong kong canto but i love my dialect tousan. mandarin i like taiwan mando but not bei jing's. but i rather hear beijing mando then hong kong canto.

i speak both and hak gah wah [if you are trying to pronounce that, it's suppose to be in canto]. I speak canto way better just because some where along the line..i stopped speaking mandarin, but currently trying to relearn it.
i love canto though...jokes are unusually funny in them. [ try translating the muffins in the oven joke in canto. cracks me up everytime]

Looking at what you guys have wrote.. you'd recommend me, a caucasian guy who hasn't ever spoken chinese before, to go with mandarin because cantonese is so hard to begin with?

if you dont speak one of this languages. i recommend to learn chinese first. the language is very soft and the chinese characters are simplified. so they are more modern than cantonese. and afterward its very easy to learn the dialect.

I speak cantonese fluently, but if I listen to songs, mandarin is easy for me to understand, and I have to concentrate to hard to understand what they sing in cantonese, weird right

I like canto more, mando sounds weird for some reason at least to me, I like mando more when it comes to songs though lol, but in terms of speaking I like canto more, but its sad all the canto resturants and stores are quickly being dominated by mando lol, I dont get why there has to be mando and canto cant they stick to one lol

I speak both, but I certaintly will choose cantonese, cause all the slangs u can say, and some how u cant write it in chinese, but if u can then it will loose its meaning. Definitly Cantonese, not doubt

Well.. Canto rulez... Mandarin has too much slang.. sometimes i am having hard time to understand China and Taiwan mandarin.. because they speak too fast!!!

I don't speak canto so i will only make an observation regarding mando:

Taiwan mando sounds much more easy goin than Beijing accent. Actually, Shanghainese mando isn't too bad either

omg i so agree, this is exactly the same as me!!

I'm canto but learned Mando at high school. I would say canto is more smoothly of me, but mando songs are really good.

I prefer mandarin because of it's flow and properness. I like the language MUCH MUCH better than Canto because it just sounds more educated. Mado is the official language of China and the historically preferred language of the scholar elites of China. It's just more sophisticated and classy. It doesn't sound so twang-ish and slang as Canto does. The Chinese President and officials all speak Mando. That's good enough for me.

i speak both canto and mando, i prefer cantonese alot more i feel that it flows alot better than mandarin though there is alot more slang in canto.

i think you just don't know enough mando. people may be paying you out and you had no idea hahaha..

i only really need to know chinese for watching series and movies and stuff. and in that sence i think knowing mando is better these days cos they have much better series/tv shows/movies. i especally dislike the HK "comedies" ther are seriously not funnie! just stupid.

Mandarin is better these days because for foriegners its easier to start with and more people speak it compared to cantonese but cantonese sounds better =P

I speak canto but i think its easier to learn mando and more useful.

I speak Mando and some of Canto, but I think that maybe learning Canto first would be easier than learning Mando first.

wellll.......I speak cantonese originally but I can speak some mandarin. I think it's easier for a catonese speaking person to learn mandarin than a mandarin speaking person to learn cantonese.....because...well, just because, really

I don't speak much of either, but I like Canto better. I just like the sound better. I guess it seems like a more chillax language, while Mando sounds more...refined (?). It's a little bit like Austrailian English and British English. Austrailian sounds more laid-back while British sounds more prim and proper. Nothing wrong with either, just personal preference.

Coming from the POV of a foreigner, though, I think it's easier to learn Mando since Mandarin speakers seem to enunciate more when speaking while Cantonese speakers tend to kinda slur all their words together. Plus, Mandarin seems more structured while Cantonese doesn't really have a clear-cut set of rules. Oral Cantonese is vastly different from written whereas the two are quite similar in Mandarin.

canto is for Chinatowns across USA and Hong Kong
Mandarin is accepted world wide

i am canto, so i obviously perfer canto over manderian. whenever i hear people speaking manderian, it seems like they talk reallie fast.

I speak Canto but i can understand some Mandarin. I prefer Mandarin though because it just sounds nicer to the ears.. so soothing, more formal, and sophisticated? I guess its because you would speak mandarin as you would write chinese, but canto is different. And it's pretty hard to find cuss words in Mandarin, and even if you do find em, they're not that offensive. Canto can be a bit more vulgar than Mandarin.

For singing a prefer Mandarin more, sounds much better then Cantonese songs..and for speaking Cantonese..since I'm Cantonese..but liking Mandarin more and more, I'm now learning Mandarin

I would love to speak mando hehehe