I would personally choose cantonese, I think it sounds better. To me, there's too much "shi qian shur shur" noises in it.
If there are too many then why do you think it sounds better?
Woops, I forgot to mention mandarin has too much "shi qian shur shur" noises in it. Not cantonese, sorry.
I learnt to speak both and personally i believe that cantonese sounds like dogs barking and ducks quacking when you hear ppl speak at the normal rate in hk or canton. but mandarin sounds much to formal when spoken, like ur expressing ur views on darwins theory of evolution or something.
mandarin is more useful. a lot of places in china that used to speak Cantonese are switching over to mandarin.
I chose to learn Cantonese first, for two reasons: while it's much less useful in China, and perhaps globally, it's the lingua franca of most Chinese communities in the U.S., where I live. It's the most commonly spoken language in San Francisco's Chinatown, for example, where I now have much greater eavesdropping prowess than I once did. Second, I prefer its sound to that of Mandarin, which sounds harsher to me. I was also curious about a seven-tone system, since the other Asian langs I speak have only five and six tones, respectively. Turns out that most dialects of contemporary Cantonese have only got six tones left, but it was still interesting to hear about.
I like Mandarin better, personally, but maybe that's because I love the music so much.