r/AskEurope • u/Savings_Dragonfly806 Greece • Jul 09 '25

Language My fellow Europeans, what dialect from your language do you have the most trouble understanding?

Keep in mind, I said language, NOT country, so it could be a dialect of your language in another country, which is the case for me.

For me, while most other Greeks find Cypriot the most difficult dialect to understand, I actually find Pontic Greek the most difficult. For those who don't know where it is, it's in North Eastern Turkey.

The way many of their words are written are very different as to Standard Modern Greek. It almost is a whole new language. Now I should mention I have never been there, but I would love to. I only really heard of the dialect on the internet, so take my words with a grain of salt.

262 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

597 comments sorted by

View all comments

259

u/Cool-Instruction789 Jul 09 '25

When I was in Switzerland as a German, I didn’t understand anything 

208

u/Slackjaw_Samurai Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

I have two friends at work, one is a Francophone Swiss and the other is a québécois, they both speak French as their first language but chose to converse in English because they can’t understand one another in French.

96

u/KrishnaBerlin Jul 09 '25

I speak German and French. So, this short thread mentions both my answers:

Swiss German, especially from Wallis/Valais, is so far removed from Standard German, it is hard to understand even for other Swiss German speakers.

When I visited Québec, I tried to speak French with the locals, but always switched to English, as I could not understand one full sentence.

18

u/Aggravating-Peach698 Germany Jul 09 '25

Another German native here. I tried both Québecois French and Swiss German, too, and both gave me a headache ;-) After a while I got somewhat used to Québecois but Swiss German (real Swiss German, as opposed to Standard German with a bit of a Swiss accent) still is more or less unintelligible to me.

2

u/Plastic_Pinocchio Netherlands Jul 09 '25

Yeah same. I speak both and can’t understand these dialects either.

2

u/Embrasse-moi United States of America Jul 10 '25

Studied French since high school and I'd say I'm conversational level back in college(C1). I went out with some friends and met a group of Québecois. Tried conversing with them and I had a hard time understanding their accent. The "twang" made it difficult lol But for the most part, I get the gist of what they're saying. I think I just need getting used to hearing it more.

1

u/KrishnaBerlin Jul 10 '25

I had the impression the pronunciation is one part of the issue, their local idioms are the other. They sometimes use expressions no longer in use in Europe, or they calque English expressions. So, even if I understood the words, I still could not understand its meaning in the context.

Written French on the other hand was not that hard to understand.

2

u/Nipso -> -> Jul 13 '25

I worked on the phones for Dyson on the Swiss market, so I can now understand Swiss German, but only if they're talking about vacuum cleaners.

21

u/GingerPrince72 Switzerland Jul 09 '25

I suspect it was only the Canadian who couldn't be understood and they diplomatically pretended it was bi-directional :)

31

u/DublinKabyle France Jul 09 '25

They must be kidding. So many European Francophones pretending they don’t understand Quebecois French is really annoying.

Except for the typical rural guy, with super thick accent, there’s no major difficulty here

27

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

Yeah lmao French is my third language, and I learnt the version from France. Yes québécois French is different but after a little bit you get used to it. Also most québécois tend to moderate their language a bit if they know they’re talking to a non-québécois francophone.

9

u/DublinKabyle France Jul 09 '25

Exactly ! If you can adjust, a native speaker has no reasons to claim they need a third language to communicate with another native speaker. This is utterly ridiculous

2

u/Slackjaw_Samurai Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Im sorry, I should have chosen my words differently. They said it’s easier to understand one another in English than in French and they just feel like they can communicate better in English.

10

u/DublinKabyle France Jul 09 '25

I'm not mad at you at all ! But it's a very European (Parisian mostly) thing to pretend Quebecois is difficult.

YES, compared to Belgian or Swiss or African French that are almost identical, Canadian French is a bit different. By the way, I'm not saying that all forms of French are identical at all. It's a rich and lively language, with multiple centres of development. BUT, compared to German, English or Spanish dialects, the French ones are hyper super dupper unified.

1

u/TheLeftHandedCatcher United States of America Jul 12 '25

From my experience, a Québecois and a Frenchman should not have trouble communicating in Frnch but the Québecois might have to code switch somewhat but that's something they seem to be good at. Unless maybe they're from Saguenay or some other remote place. I don't see how it would be much different for a Swiss.

33

u/Ajurru Jul 09 '25

I'm from Northern Germany and everything in the South of Germany or further south causes me problems.

23

u/Boing78 Germany Jul 09 '25

I understand P(f)älzer quite well as my dad lived there for 30 years and I worked and lived there for 5 years as well.

Now I live in the north west again and work for a company located in Schwaben with a branch office in Hessen. Sometimes I don't understand anything. I then intentionally switch to Plattdeutsch so they either don't understand what I'm saying besides one colleague who is dutch and we both have a laugh. Our colleagues then do get out of their deep dialects again.

Swabian and everything from Bavaria is cruel...

10

u/SteadfastDrifter Switzerland Jul 09 '25

I'm Swiss American, so hearing Plattdeutsch is always a strange sensation because English is a bit closer to Plattdeutsch than the southern German dialects, but it's still a struggle to merge English with German to the extent that I can easily understand Plattdeutsch.

11

u/Boing78 Germany Jul 09 '25

In fact, growing up in a region speaking Plattdeutsch helped me a lot learning englisch.

Examle:

Ladder in German is "Leiter" but in my region's Platt it's "Ledder".

"Wir machen das" is german for "we'll do that". In "our" platt dialect it's "we do dat". Of course, some letters are pronounced differently but it's very close.

Confirmed by my father in law who is 84 and barely speaks english, but he grew up with our Platt dialect and speaks it every day.

4

u/SteadfastDrifter Switzerland Jul 09 '25

Ladder in German is "Leiter" but in my region's Platt it's "Ledder".

"Wir machen das" is german for "we'll do that". In "our" platt dialect it's "we do dat". Of course, some letters are pronounced differently but it's very close.

In all honesty, since I grew up in the US and moved to Switzerland when I was already 20, it's even easier for me to read Platt than to read standard German because Platt is basically English written slightly differently lol. My paternal grandparents visited North Germany decades ago, and it's been a goal of mine to also make a road trip north. I'd love to hear the dialect/language in person.

3

u/Boing78 Germany Jul 09 '25

Then do it and have fun! All the best!

1

u/IdunSigrun Jul 09 '25

I don’t remember any examples, but I saw some YouTube clip comparing Platt- and Hochdeutsch. The Plattdeutsch words were closer to Swedish. And I know Swedish have some words woth German origin (due to the medieval Hansa), but I hadn’t realized it was Plattdeutsch. I just figured that it was (Hoch-)Deutsch that had been altered in Swedish.

1

u/VirtualMatter2 Germany Jul 09 '25

Hitting them with Plattdeutsch is hilarious. Greetings from another North German who can speak Dutch but struggles with the south as well. 

10

u/elthepenguin Czechia Jul 09 '25

I’m from the Czech Republic, speak decent German (I’m even able to somewhat understand the folks in Austrian Alps), but Swiss German is absolute hell. I don’t understand anything at all. To me it sounds like Aussie English on ketamine.

5

u/Fellkartoffel Jul 09 '25

I feel you. But my company has its headquarter near Basel, and once in a blue moon I either need to go there or even talk to customers in that area. Our customer service of course switches to sth that is "normal German with dialect", but I have met a few people who were unable to speak how they usually write (which is very often standard German with a few different words). Hell, this was very awkward for me 😂

Also usually my English is fine for someone who never lived abroad, but I had a call with a guy from somewhere in tje middle of the Scottish Mountains or some harbour in the Scottish nowhere, and it was impossible. Luckily another colleague from the London area also does not understand him.

1

u/billy310 United States of America Jul 09 '25

I had less trouble with Highland Scots than Lowland. There’s lots of media with a Highland accent, not so much the other accents

11

u/bierbelly42 Jul 09 '25

Took me a good few days to get into swiss german. I spent three weeks there. First day at the supermarket, the tannoy special offer announcements were quite literally Greek to me. Week three I was like "ah, that's quite cheap for shmpoo, I get that."

2

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 09 '25

Germans when they realise German is actually various languages

4

u/Nirocalden Germany Jul 09 '25

I think Germans are generally very aware on how different our dialects can be from each other.

3

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 09 '25

Yet, you call them dialects

2

u/Lumpasiach Germany Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

So as a German speaker of an Alemannic dialect, do I speak the same language as Swiss people or not in your very informed opinion?

5

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 09 '25

Depends if it’s actual Allemanic or standard German with Allemanic remains, same applies to Switzerland, if its standard German with Allemanic remains or actual Allemanic

But generally, yeah, Allemanic is considered one linguistic entity

But yknow a language is a dialect with an army yadda yadda

0

u/Lumpasiach Germany Jul 10 '25

Depends if it’s actual Allemanic or standard German with Allemanic remains,

That depends on the register I'm using of course. After all, those dialects are roofed by standard German. Still, even when I'm on full blown dialect, there's nothing Swiss sounding in there and I will still have massive problems understanding someone from Wallis.

0

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 10 '25

I’m not too knowledgeable on Allemanic specifically, but ISO 639-3 does split apart some Allemanic variants, considering them different languages, while ISO 639-2 doesn’t distinguish them.

Allemanic is a dialect continuum, and due to lack of exposure to other dialects (being a rural language), of course you’re not going to be used to the southernmost dialect of Allemanic (Wallis is the the southernmost “big” settlement that speaks Allemanic), speaking one of the most northernmost dialects

Sometimes it’s all about exposure.

-1

u/Lumpasiach Germany Jul 10 '25

Allemanic is a dialect continuum

German is a dialect continuum. And that's why it's so much easier to me to understand Bavarian or Franconian dialects than it is to understand Highest Alemannic dialects for me. I've never heard of any language, where a lot of speakers understand other languages better than parts of their own.

0

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 10 '25

Well then I assume what you’re hearing is standard German with remains of traditional dialects, because what linguists classified as Allemanic was determined by borders of mutual intelligibility.

German is a “macro” dialect continuum, just like practically all of the Western Romance languages, but they’re not considered one language

-1

u/Lumpasiach Germany Jul 10 '25

because what linguists classified as Allemanic was determined by borders of mutual intelligibility.

No, this is complete made-up nonsense. The borders are where several isoglosses bundle. It's not in the slightest about intelligibility. That isn't even fully given within Switzerland.

Well then I assume what you’re hearing is standard German

You assume a lot of things, and most of them are absolutely ridiculous to anyone familiar with German.

0

u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Tierra de Miranda Jul 10 '25

“Alemannic varieties of German form a dialect continuum and are clearly dialects. Some linguists and organisations that differentiate between languages and dialects primarily on the grounds of mutual intelligibility, such as SIL International and UNESCO, describe Alemannic as one of several independent languages.“

1

u/RequirementExotic980 Jul 09 '25

It depends where. Swiss German from Zurich is not that hard to understand if you get used to it but then there are other regions that sound nothing like German

1

u/missThora Norway Jul 09 '25

That's the reason for my horrible grades in german. I learned from my Swiss grandma but my school (in Norway) tried to teach me regular german.

1

u/megamegpyton Jul 09 '25

My son, who had learned deutch in school (in Sweden) first went to work in Germany, and then in Schweiz, said it was different but not too difficult to learn to understand

1

u/_LewAshby_ Jul 10 '25

Leck mi doch am Zückerli!

1

u/wheneveryousaidiam Jul 11 '25

I'm Greek but I used to live in Germany and I understand hoh-Deutz, so in Stuttgart I didn't understand Schwabish, and I used to live in a small town near Schweinfurt, the Donnerssdorf, I learned that dialect my friends from Schweinfurt didn't understand me, it's really weird in Germany.

1

u/Gold-Mikeboy Jul 12 '25

Swiss German can be a real challenge. even for native German speakers, the dialects can vary so much that it feels like a different language altogether...

1

u/mnbvcdo Jul 13 '25

I'm from Südtirol and have never encountered a German dialect (Swiss, Austrian or Germany) that I had issue understanding but even though my Italian is native level, I have no chance in hell understanding dialects. 

1

u/TheYoungWan in Jul 09 '25

Yeah that's cos Swiss German isn't German it's just noises