Do you people study accents??

Just wondering whether you people try to study/get used to different accents of spoken mandarin and how you normally go about it? It's quite embarassing when people speak to you in mandarin and yet you don't understand 'cause you only understand a pretty standard accent.

I've been listening to alot of Taiwan mandarin lately to get used to the accent particularly the MTV male accent.

Just wondering whether you people try to study/get used to different accents of spoken mandarin and how you normally go about it? It's quite embarassing when people speak to you in mandarin and yet you don't understand 'cause you only understand a pretty standard accent.

Absolutely. I think one good method is to do like you are doing, and try to watch a TV show that has that accent, and then slowly adapt.

Another thing you can do is listen to certain materials and just do specific drills to listen for tones. For example, if you listen to the BBC's 中國叢談's most recent episode (9/17/009) with the analyst 裴敏新, notice at point 3:27-8 where he says 把握- notice the third tone kind of sits there as a slow misdirection jab punch to one side, in order to give the powerful 4th- the upper cut of Chinese tones (in my bad boxing metaphor) more clarity through its contrast. Simply listen for the tones. Notice when words are unstressed or stressed. Rewind certain sections many of times and specifically concentrate on how things are said- tone and intonation wise. (These drills were useful for me, because I used to mainly listen for the pinyin, so to speak. If someone's pinyin was off standard, I was screwed.)

Another drill you could do is watch TV with subtitles, and when a new set of subtitles comes up, look at some word you recognize at the right hand side of the screen, think of its tones, wait for the dialogue to reach that point, and then listen for it to see if you got it right.

In short, I strongly believe that besides knowing some of the common regional "mis-pronunciation" patterns of standard Putonghua, developing an ability to listen for tones is the key to understanding any regional speech. Besides overall targeted exposure (though TV and talking with people), I think you can speed up the process through drills.

Also, one of the things I like to do is to listen to people's accents, and then try to keep in mind how they pronounce certain words and their sentence intonation. In mind my, I have a map of the US and Canada and all the subtle regional accents.

Likewise, I think I can pretty accurately identify if people are from Beijing, Henan, Shanghai (or Zhejinag, Jiangsu), Sichuan, Hubei, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Dongbei, Taiwan....etc. Some accents I don't have to much familiarity with (Hunan, Fujian, Guangxi, Gansu...and others). But, I find that if you really pay attention to accents, it is useful in overall listening skills.

I still have the dream of one day making listening materials designed for Chnese learners based on off-standard Putonghua variations.

You can find some video lessons for Chinese learners based on Taiwanese accents here. Also for Beijing and Suzhou accents. The site is mostly in Japanese, but if you press the right buttons you can get transcriptions in Hanzi and Pinyin.

Radio from overseas Chinese communities is also another good method to practice accents. Given the large variety in backgrounds among the overseas Chinese community, the presenters and guests usually have a broad range of accents. Radio Free Asia in particular is a bit of a free for all, not to mention they use crappy recording/encoding quality to reduce file size, and so it's a really good workout for your listening skills.

I don't study accents specifically, but I do get exposure through TV and other media. Usually there are a few accented people in a TV series, and it's relatively easy to get exposure to, e.g. Beijing, Taiwan, Dongbei, Sichuan and a number of other accents this way.

Like wushijiao says, tones are often a better aid than the initials/finals. And to get a really good ear for tones, you need to get good at understanding standard speech first, IMHO.

I think that if you have loads of listening input, you should be fine with different accents, without much extra work needed.

It all comes with practice and exposure. I don't think you need to go out of your way to specifically learn regional accents. You just get used to them as you gain experience.

That's why I think it's important to learn from as many different people as possible. People who practice with only their partner obviously have the advantage of more intense exposure but are more likely to come unstuck as soon as they try to speak to anyone else. (Not just because of accent, but also individuals tend to use a specific set of vocabulary which varies from person to person.)

I can't say that I consciously study accents, but I know that I'm unconsciously mimicking the accents around me -- my accent is something like a 東北人 (my wife and family) that's lived in Shanghai for years (my environment). I agree with a lot of the above comments, though, that it's just a matter of exposure and practice -- I find, for instance, that I'm able to understand a lot of heavily Shanghai-accented Mandarin better than my wife can, just because I've lived in the south longer, and have done almost all of my learning here.

Mostly,we say sb has accent means his tones is different from the Manderin.It's just OK,if you listen carefully ,you should understand them.What's worse is when the differences lay on the pronunciations

What's worse is when the differences lay on the pronunciations

Yes. When I was travelling in Yunnan, people kept asking if I was meigui ren. I was wondering what 玫瑰人 is, until I realised they were actually trying to say 美国人.

What about cases like understanding Dengxiao Peng, Chairman Mao etc who tend to mix dialect pronounciation of characters together with standard mandarin?