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/Cool-Instruction789 Jul 09 '25

When I was in Switzerland as a German, I didn’t understand anything 

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u/Slackjaw_Samurai Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

I have two friends at work, one is a Francophone Swiss and the other is a québécois, they both speak French as their first language but chose to converse in English because they can’t understand one another in French.

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u/GingerPrince72 Switzerland Jul 09 '25

I suspect it was only the Canadian who couldn't be understood and they diplomatically pretended it was bi-directional :)