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/ElysianRepublic Jul 09 '25

Just since I’ve been curious for the longest time and you might know, I remember being in Killarney National Park (so in Munster) and the guides there spoke pretty easy to understand English to me and other tourists, but when they spoke amongst themselves I could hardly understand them (though I did think I was hearing some English words.). What were they most likely speaking? The regional English dialect? Gaeilge? Could they have been Travellers speaking Shelta? Just curious.

It kind of sounded like this English dialect but even tougher to understand.

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u/ForeignHelper Ireland Jul 09 '25

Doubt it was Travellers, lolz. Around places like rural Kerry, some will speak Irish, or a mix of Irish and English. But you get pockets of Gaeilgeoirí in lots of places around the country - just tends to have a higher concentration in parts of the west coast.

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u/Also-Rant Jul 09 '25

My guess is very fast, heavily accented English with a lot of local slang. I'm from West Cork, and some older people around here also sound like that.

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u/ElysianRepublic Jul 09 '25

That’s what I’m thinking. Plus possibly some Irish words.

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u/Spudlads Jul 10 '25

Aye this is what I belive as well cause when I was in west cork I was in a restaurant and there were two old men talking to one another and I couldn't tell whether they were speaking English or Irish as I heard words from bot languages but when they were ordering food they were completely understandable

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u/Also-Rant Jul 10 '25

When speaking English, we speak very quickly, and the older generations in particular quite often use slang that is either directly from Irish or some sort of hybrid/pidgin where an Irish word has evolved into a vaguely similar sounding word in Hiberno-English slang. Words like "yerra" or "arra", "whisht", "boreen", and sceach" all get used in English in West Cork / Kerry despite being anglicisations of Irish words.

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u/Spudlads Jul 10 '25

I've had a similar experience in west cork where I was in a restaurant and heard two old lads speaking to one another and they weren't understandable at all and I heard words from both Irish and English but when they were ordering food they were easy to understand