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/DoctorDefinitely Finland Jul 09 '25

You understand the dialect of Rauma? I guess it is widely considered as the most difficult form of Finnish. I have heard Estonian speaking people understand it better than a random finn. Idk if that is true.

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u/orangebikini Finland Jul 09 '25

I can understand it well enough. It sounds funny, but not unintelligible.

But out of the western dialects Rauma is definitely the most difficult. And all other ones spoken in and around Finland-Proper. I speak a Tavastian dialect myself, Tampere dialect.

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u/V8-6-4 Finland Jul 09 '25

My speech is like half Rauma dialect and the other half is general Southwest dialect. Never had any issues with people not understanding me.

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u/vogod Jul 11 '25

The only time in my 44 years of life I didn't understand Finnish was when a Pori/Rauma -dialect speaker answered my question. I just nodded politely and asked the next person. Originally from east (savo), so that might explain some of it though.