Mandarin vs cantonese language

the tonal shifts of hanyu pin yin makes westerners find learning mandarin an uphill task.it brings to mind an old british friend Sarah Mary Fong who married her Malaysian Chinese husband who was a food technologist but worked in Schumberger later as the pay was good.he was away for long periods and she single handedly brought up her family whilst learning to live in a chinese area in Cheras.she was adaptable n fun.she told her hilarious story of speaking Cantonese to her mother in law.she had bought the famous chilli crab to let her in laws to eat.putting the crabs on the kitchen table,she hollered to her deaf mom in law in her best Cantonese, Nai nai, lay sik hai.now the rest of family quickly burst into tears and corrected her mispronunciation. sik hai in cantonese has a vulgar meaning in wrong tone.she invited to old lady to literally " eat Pussy*,instead of crabs.an embarrassimg faux pax just adding an extra word can change its meaning entirely.my son recounted the story of his mechanic,Ah Keong which means Strong guy in chinese.a little kid follow his grandpa to the mechanic workshop and heard grandpa calling Keong Chai to the mechanic.the little guy followed suit by adding an extra word Keong gan Chai to it and got a tight slap on his face by grandpa as he called him rapist man instead of strong man i myself have mispronounced words and got scolding from my late mom.the proverb,yi san hai bi yi san gao,qiang chien hai you qiang chien so.it means a high mountain will always be overshadowed by another higher one,a strong swordsmen will also be defeated by another stronger one. it reminds us to be humble and less arrogant of our achievements.but i mispronounced qiang chien to wrong tone and it means a rapst will be defeated by a stronger rapist.so a slip of the tongue in pronouncing mandarin n cantonese is comical so watch your words.