Cantonese/Mandarin
No, no. I don't know much about Chinese, but I do know that Cantonese is the Chinese dialect spoken in southern China, centering around Canton (Guangzhou); Mandarin is the northern dialect spoken in the area centering on Beijing. There are several other dialects, including Fukien (east coast). The various dialects differ from each other to such an extent that they are not mutually intellegible; a Cantonese speaker will understand very little of what a Mandarin speaker says. Of course, the written language, being composed of ideographs, is universal, since it does not depend on the spoken language.
It has been said, and I have not seen anyone dispute it, that most of the Chinese in the U.S. speak Cantonese. During the period in the late 1800s when Chinese emigrated to the West Coast (primarily) and later to other parts of the U.S., most of them came from southern China and spoke Cantonese. This is why Chinese food, as served in Chinese restaurants in the U.S., up to about 20 years ago, was almost exclusively Cantonese. When Sichuan and Hunan food was introduced, it was like a revolution -- we roundeyes had never dreamed that Chinese food could be like that, being accustomed to the Cantonese style only. Of course the joke was on us. It appears that in China, Cantonese is the gourmet style of cooking; the imperial family, although northerners (from Mongolia, actually) ate Cantonese food exclusively.
