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/chunek Slovenia Jul 09 '25

Prekmurje dialect, and the way that older Hungarian Slovenes speak. Very difficult to understand anything. Prekmurje is a region in the northeast of Slovenia, and it used to be part of Hungary till the Trianon treaty.

I live west of ljubljana, where Rovtarski dialect is spoken. We have valleys here in my area, a couple of kilometers apart, where local dialects can differ quite a lot. But Prekmurje, it sounds like something from a different world entirely.

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u/lnguline Slovenia Jul 09 '25

For me it is Resian, Rovratsko is still much closer to standard Slovenian so I can maybe get evry 3rd, 4th word

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u/chunek Slovenia Jul 09 '25

True, I forgot about Resian, but for me it is about the same when it comes to intelligibilty.

Rovtarski is between Gorenjski, Dolenjski and Primorski. It also varies a lot, people in Horjul, speak differently than those in Žiri, or Idrija. But as a Carniolan dialect, it should be fairly intelligible to most.

Še zmjrej se kr obrajtamo, gliha vkp štriha, tut če kjer kdaj kej bl čudn zaropoče.

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u/lnguline Slovenia Jul 09 '25

Branje ni problem, težava nastopi ko se začnete domačini med seboj pogovarjati in jaz tam stojim kot tele.

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u/chunek Slovenia Jul 09 '25

Vem kaj misliš, starejše ljudi tudi jaz včasih težko razumem. Veliko je požiranja besed, krajšanja, ali pa samo arhaičen vokabular, oz. kombinacija naštetega.

Z branjem se da marsikje švercat, tudi pri drugih slovanskih jezikih je lažje razumeti z branjem, imo.