As the answers above said, Mandarin is the "standard" Chinese. It is the official language of the Chinese government. The written form and spoken form are pretty much the same. It is spoken in mainland China and Taiwan, but maybe some minor ethnic group in the rural area still speak their own dialect and don't understand Mandarin. Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese and it is used in Hong Kong, Macau, and parts of the Guangdong province. People in the Northern China don't understand Cantonese at all, and most people in Hong Kong don't speak Mandarin as fluent as people do in the Mainland . In fact, there's a huge difference between the spoken form and the written form of Cantonese. If you try to "write" the spoken Cantonese, it is often considered as "inappropriate", even by the native speaker.

there are various languages in China. every province has its own local language. contonese is the dialect of guangdong province,taiwanese is the dialect of fujian province ect. but not all the chinese can speak them. Mandarin might be eaier for you

Mandarin is standard chinese，which is dialect of Beijing and most northen of China. chinese cantonese is the dialect of GuangDong,and other chinese is the dialects of other places. many accents amony them,A men who come from north alway cant understand the dialect of south at all but most chinese people can speak Mandarin. The writing of them are the same,difference only in reading,So no one is easy!lol,i think so And there are some other languages in china,just as Korean Mongolian Tibetan and so on,which are used by minority.

they are all chinese, but only Mandarin is standard chinese, and the others are chinese which have accent. and most chinese people can speak Mandarin and another accent one. well, there are so many accents besides these two. absolutely, Mandarin is the easiest one.

Mandarin is the standard Chinese. Any dialect is of local accent to some extent. If you want to speak in Chinese, it's better to learn Madarin. The reasons are as follows:1.It's the official language of the Chinese government, as the answer above.2.Almost every Chinese people can understand Mandarin.Because every child is taught by Madarin.3.There are lots of books of Mandarin. So the resources for learning are very rich.You can get a Madrin book with Pinyin easy. That's all. Joy our Chinese! Good luck! -------Joe(Joy Our English)