I’m aware Chinese dialects which have written standard use the same character system, generally speaking, but how different is written Cantonese from Mandarin? How much difficulty would a reader of Mandarin have in comprehending a forum post or a newspaper from a Cantonese website, for example?
I ask, mainly as I’m considering learning Cantonese after Mandarin, and I am quite content learning Cantonese with a romanization (I know traditional Chinese characters) and simply reading anything I find in Chinese in Mandarin pronunciation. Mainly since I hear Cantonese is spoken and not really written, though I understand it has some specific characters not found in Mandarin, for example.
Thanks for any clarification!