How different are Mandarin and Cantonese from each other?

[tando]

@Taiwan_Luthiers

The only similarity is that they share the same written language.

isn’t is quite characteristic of them? I

I think I understand written Cantonese as well as I understand simplified Mandarin.

[Hapadoge]

I thought Chinese was to Japanese like English was to Spanish

[Hapadoge]

@meishijia

but my wife as a native Mandarin speaker can’t understand much of any Cantonese.

That’s just like how my mom is.

[OysterOmelet]

@Hapadoge

I thought Chinese was to Japanese like English was to Spanish

No! Chinese and Japanese aren’t even in the same language family. They’re only similar because of borrowed words (in both directions) and the literary apparatus.

[quandary]

@OysterOmelet

Is that typical, or an extreme example?

I’d say it’s pretty typical.

[jimipresley]

Mandarin (as spoken in China) sounds like someone with a cleft palate trying to clean debris from their teeth. Cantonese sounds like someone with a cleft palate vomiting.
A fundamental difference.

[Swillbury]

Unintelligible from one another if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The amount of words that are the same is slim pickings. SOME of the sentence structures are the same but it’s not 1 to 1 obviously.