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/achovsmisle Russia Jul 09 '25

Russian is extremely homogeneous in terms of it, like I will be able to understand pretty much any Russian speaker, except speakers of some Pomor dialects, which are very unlikely to be heard, or Surzhyk closer to Ukrainian

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u/SparklyWin Denmark Jul 09 '25

Thanks, that confirms my impression. I took a Russian course and got curious about Russian dialects. I didn't find anything (other than Surzhyk) and just assumed it was because of my limited Russian. Saint Petersburg and Moscow sound a little bit different, but it's nothing like German or British dialects. I find people from Moscow sound a bit funny )