I've been learning Japanese here for some time, and have been making great progress (The iPhone app is pure awesome by the way!), however recently, I've been offered a good job dependent on my ability to learn "Chinese". Having experience with Kanji will likely give me an advantage, so I'm ready to get started!

Now for my question:

I know there are two kinds of chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese, but which one is better for business? Here are some of the companies I would be dealing with

http://www.janghogroup.com/

http://www.yuandacn.com

Are these in Mandarin or Cantonese? Sorry to be such a noob! lol

The first company is based in Beijing, and the second seems to be in quite a few parts of China, so Mandarin is your best bet; it is the standard for most of the mainland. You would learn the same written characters for both Mandarin and Cantonese, and for many other dialects.

It is a common misconception that there are two kinds of Chinese. In fact, there are MANY different dialects of Chinese. They are called dialects for political reasons, but in linguistic terms they are in some cases actually different languages because they are mutually unintelligible (when spoken, though they use the same writing system). Mandarin is the lingua franca across all of mainland China and is by far the most widely spoken form of Chinese. If someone says they are learning Chinese, or that they want you to learn Chinese, it's almost certain that they mean Mandarin. Cantonese is not even the second most widely spoken dialect in China; it just gets more exposure in the West because it's spoken in Hong Kong.