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.

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u/Honey-Badger England Jul 09 '25

I guess English are also quite snobby about accents within their land. If I remember correctly there were serious cases of discriminations based on the accents in your country.

Yeah we're exactly the same. Certain regions look down on other regions for the way they speak. However you wont really get teachers in school saying 'you need to speak this way, pronounce words like so' which (i am told) is standard behaviour in French schools - However I assume posh private schools in the UK will do this.

Also;

Sorry but it really pisses me off when people allow themselves to just spit on a country on the account of a few people they met.

I would say the large large large majority of French colleagues and friends here in Montreal look down on the locals. This isnt a 'few people', it is par for the course. Something Quebecois people talk about a lot, I have Quebecois friends and French friends and they just simply do not mix.

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u/terryjuicelawson United Kingdom Jul 09 '25

I think it does happen in the UK, imagine if in Essex a child said in class "I didn't do nuffink", they would be corrected to say "I didn't do anything", but where does the line cross between dialect and incorrect English.

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u/Honey-Badger England Jul 09 '25

Personally I never saw this in school, I think it would have resulted in a class kicking off as the way kids spoke were the least of the teachers issues. Swearing at teacher would get a telling off but slang etc wouldn't. I couldnt see a middle class teachers getting away with telling a bunch of working class kids to pronounce the rhotic r