Yes, there are so many accents, dialects even.
I’m supposed to learn “putonghua” (?) and be aware that I won’t understand a word in the streets.
It’s a bit like in Greece. You learn the official version for exams and then you need an interpreter in 60% of the country! Even native speakers need help with local versions. Multiply that by the considerably huger population of China and you get my “mainland norm” problem…
Haha, seriously, if you can understand the Taiwanese Chinese, you’re settled. There’s no need to follow the Beijing accent and twist your tongue into knots. I can’t do it either, and I’m fluent… Which might mean that my spoken Chinese is bad? Haha, but honestly, the Mainland Chinese who I know consider my Chinese to be pretty good. And they understand me so it should be fine. And besides, I think, the most basic thing is to learn Chinese first. You can always worry about accents later, I mean, if you know the words, you just need a few minutes to adjust to their accent.
I’m available. I live in Europe and I have skype. P.m. me at viki inbox so that I can tell you my skype username and we can discuss timezones 
In Greece you need an interpreter in 60% of the country? What???
I think I’ve been almost everywhere in the country, from north to south, and, except in the very remote parts of Crete or if you happen to meet someone speaking Vlahika in Epirus (but this isn’t Greek anyway), all the rest are quite comprehensible by anybody. Nowadays very few people speak their dialects, which is a shame by the way, but it makes it easier to communicate.
(It is different with Cypriot language, but I don’t think that you’d be referring to Cyprus as Greece)
I thought you were Greek… You are Greek, aren’t you?
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.