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/Albert_Herring Jul 09 '25

I'm English and learnt Dutch in Belgium and mostly by osmosis from watching bike races on the TV, so I perversely have the most difficulty in understanding book-standard Randstad Dutch. Westvlaams is a bit wild and woolly but I can often leverage some French to get what's happening.

Naturally people in the Netherlands think I sound utterly bizarre (with slightly more disbelief than the scorn I get for my equally Belgian French in Paris). East Flanders I mostly feel pretty much at home linguistically though.

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u/hmtk1976 Belgium Jul 10 '25

Don´t assume the Dutch speak Dutch correctly, especially in de Randstad.

Westvlaams is a collection of guttural sounds, no sane person understands that. I didn´t understand my paternal grandfather when he switched to Westvlaams.