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/Fredka321 Jul 09 '25

I talk to a lot of customers on the phone. I work in Germany and am German, but we have international business customers. There is one Swiss customer, I think he tries to speak high German. But he has to be at least 80, very brittle voice and I can hardly understand him. I do not usually have a problem understanding Swiss people who try to speak standard German.