I tend to think of it as classical versus Vulgar Latin. I can write Cantonese phrases word for word (with a few Cantonese only characters) and mandarin only spe

I tend to think of it as classical versus Vulgar Latin. I can write Cantonese phrases word for word (with a few Cantonese only characters) and mandarin only speakers won’t be able to understand it, or I can rephrase it into a “classical” way so that any literate Chinese person from any dialect can read it.