Yes, I am Greek, but I guess I tend to travel to remote places.
Most of the people I meet speak normally, but in some places, especially the older people, tend to use local dialects and special vocabulary a lot.
Vlachika, arvanitika, pontiaka, kritika, tsakonika, maniatika, eftanisiotika… When they use the full range, I really need help! I think non-native speakers would face serious problems.
We could say that these dialects are not exactly modern greek, but still…
If you’re speaking of foreign learners, then you’re absolutely right. But even those people who speak their dialect will tend to know standard Greek if needed, because of TV etc.
(As for Eptanisa, I suppose I’m spoiled because as a half-Italian, I can understand it all, buawh!)
@piyush_lko What happened to the language challenge? Those where fun and you could win a book of Tuttle. I was ranked first but never won a book though. But those language challenges where fun and would like to play them again.
@christina_ No I just watch them in context… I use the hangul subs to practice reading…
Taiwanese dramas are a great way to get introduced to Chinese and to practice Mandarin too.
The only “problem” I found is that sometimes they might not be saying words the “correct” mainlander way, but that’s honestly not even an issue.
Someone said that there’s usually heavier accents with Mainlanders, and that’s really funny to me because I always found heavier accents to be from Taiwanese actors.
But I do see their point because there are hundreds of different accents (some that I can’t even understand) on the mainland and the Taiwanese accent is mainly just slurring words together because they sometimes talk REALLY fast.
But if you want to listen to mainlanders speak, check out When Love Walked In with Zhou Mi, Victoria Song, and Calvin Chen.
For Taiwanese dramas: Anything with Aaron Yan because he’s amazing.
@sofiya399
I guess I could watch everything related to the chinese language, for practice and diversity, but be careful to only watch mainland ones just before the exams.
Do cantonese count or they are too different?
Hi @dudie thanks for mentioning the language challenge, the links to challenges seem to be expired so I can’t figure out what it used to be. I have read this thread: https://discussions.viki.com/t/earn-points-for-gifts-with-language-learning-activities/2527/ but would love to see how it was structured. I have interviewed few people already, and I will get back to more of you soon for the call.
Thanks, it’s 2:30 am now, will reply in the morning! 
Cantonese is a completely different language. They have 8 tones instead of 4 and the pronunciation is very different too.
If you’re using a mainland drama, definitely check out Still Lala.
Ouch, am I going to have to learn cantonese as a separate language then? (mock disappointment, planning already!!)
Any suggestions for dramas that are more action-inclined? I still haven’t found my favourites.
I liked Disguiser, I hated Windchime, I liked Wuxin, I hated Green Fox.
Currently using Viki to improve my Chinese! I only know some Mandarin for daily life so far, because it’s what I speak at home, with Cantonese and French, but I am way from being fluent. So I watch Chinese-speaking dramas, to develop my ears and vocab. Very useful! Especially if I watch without English subs first. Tough but interesting! And yes, I also prefer Taiwanese dramas over Chinese ones, but only because the latters use very high pitched voices. Oww.
@littleangele
Do you just watch them as you would watch any other drama or focus on specific contexts (e.g. topics, daily situations etc) ?
I’m asking because I come here to watch them for study but I end up watching for fun. I’m not sure how productive that is.
Hahaha. At first, I began watching them for fun. My first drama ever was a Taiwanese one (Devil Beside You), 6 to 8 years ago, something like that. And it wasn’t until some time ago that I realized I was getting better at understanding Chinese after so much time spent in front of my laptop, haha. So no, I didn’t really choose a specific context. That’s way too hard. You never know what vocab is really used in a drama unless you have watched at least 2 to 3 episodes. Some dramas, I found the vocab real hard and still don’t understand everything, but I continued to watch because I liked them. Some others were average (in term of my preference, of course) but they spoke on a level where I could understand, say, 70% of it, so I continued to train myself. Roughly speaking, no focus whatsover, haha. Mixing fun and learning. 
The language learning challenges were so much fun! Too bad the blog posts are no longer available. I found some of them through the Internet Archive and posted them here.
I didn’t know about language challenges. From what I’ve gathered from the links provided here, they must have been both fun and useful as comprehension assessments.
I am Indonesian. I’m sharpening my ability to speak Mandarin. To be honest, more comfortable to watch the drama of Taiwan outside Viki because they provide Hanzi is Chinese characters. If at Viki, it is very difficult to guess what they were talking about because some of the words in Mandarin is similar, and sometimes that means it resembles. If I’m translate at Viki, I had to repeat the scenes to know what they said and examine each tone used by the actors to find out what is being said. If told to translate the drama, I would prefer to drama Taiwan because Taiwan actor accent was more clearly audible than Mainland actor dialect that has its own dialect.
we provide scripts.
@sofiya399 Honestly? O.o You’re the first person I met who thinks so. Maybe it’s the accents that we’re accustomed to then?
@christina_ Yeah, Cantonese is a totally different language. The only way I understand them is by reading the Chinese subtitles at the bottom. Same goes for the other Chinese dialects, which might be a point to note when watching some of the Taiwanese dramas. Some of the older characters have a tendency to talk in Taiwanese.
As for dramas that are action-inclined, watch all the Jin Yong wuxia adaptations! Like Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Return of the Condor Heroes, The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The Smiling Proud Wanderer! I grew up on these 
Sadly, most of these don’t seem available/aren’t subbed on Viki 
But given their popularity, you might be able to find them with English subs on other websites.
But there’s still the very first Chinese Paladin (it’s filled chock-full with hot actors and actresses 
), the Journey of Flower (it’s tragic though), Prince of Lan Ling (also tragic). Oh no, I just realised that all these I’m recommending are all tragic, but they are all REALLY GOOD. Err… another one is the current Singing All Along. It’s looking really good, with cool fighting, and while there might be lots of angst along the way, I can definitely promise you a happy ending (because that’s what it was in the history books).
Oh yes, another series you can check out is the Taiwanese K.O. series (K.O. One, The X-Family, K.O.3an Guo, etc.) Actually, that one’s “semi-action”, more Power Ranger posing kind, but it’s really funny (and has way too many lame and retarded jokes), but yeah, I sometimes rewatch it when I’m stressed and need to have a good laugh.
I don’t mind tragic ends, they are better than obligatory happy ends.
I think that Taiwan and Hong Kong produce modern day action dramas and China specialises in period or mythical ones.
That’s true. But I personally don’t like tragic endings, they make me bawl my eyes out, but history is tragic 
Actually in the 1990s and 2000s, Hong Kong had quite a few period dramas which were quite good too. And a number of them were quite cheerful too. One of my favourites was War of the In-Laws. War and Beauty was good too, but the cat-fighting was WOAH! But these days, I guess they’re being edged out by the Chinese big budget productions? But with Chinese big budget productions, you have to be quite selective, because there are some which just throw buckets of money into getting big name actors and actresses and fancy costumes and sets, but the plot is total rubbish and the costumes totally ridiculous.
I find the Taiwanese have a heavier accent as well. Once they speak, I would generally know that they are Taiwanese.
Also, when Taiwanese artists managed to break into the Chinese market, they tend to “tone down” their accents. Well, even mainland China artists would tone down their local accents and speak the more acceptable form of TV accent.
Edit: For Aaron Yan’s sake, I hope he can break into the mainland China market soon, else his career would stay stagnant in Taiwan. The mainland China market is where the money and popularity is…