[inkyoto]

> Spoken Cantonese and mandarin are mutually unintelligible, but in written form, at least without colloquialisms, they are basically the same language.

They are not. Written Cantonese, in fact, uses the Mandarin grammar and the Mandarin lexicon and is, essentially, Mandarin, not Cantonese. There are substantial differences in the grammar and in the basic lexicon between the two to make them distinct languages. Written Cantonese that uses the Cantonese lexicon is incomprehensible to a Mandarin speaker, either, just as the spoken Cantonese is.