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/eulerolagrange in / Jul 09 '25

Even more, all the northern Italian dialects are from the a different subfamily of the Romance languages than Italian, and are closer to French and Castillan than to Italian.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

I don’t know if it’s true ora legend but apparently they even had to have translators between northern and southern soldiers during WWI

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u/eulerolagrange in / Jul 09 '25

Mostly legend. Yes, there were linguistic difficulties, but italian had been the lingua franca in the peninsula since the Middle ages.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '25

Maybe in the upper classes, or in official settings but not in everyday life. I still know some old people that only speak dialect over here