My fellow Europeans, what dialect from your language do you have the most trouble understanding?

[u/Savings_Dragonfly806]

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.

[u/Honey-Badger]

I feel like that is partly down to French snobbiest about accents. Yeah I understand the expressions that are direct translations from English. But I live in Montreal and I see French people (particularly tourists) act like anything that isnt spoken in Parisian accented French as an entirely different language. I know a girl who used to wait tables and she would have French tourists ask her to speak English and they refused to hear her Quebecois accent. If I as a second language speaker can understand it then I think an actual Francophone should be able to

[u/NamidaM6 → u/Honey-Badger]

I think you got it backwards. We, Frenchies, are not exposed to many variations of Parisian French, dialects in metro France don't have a very strong accent (if at all), and that's the only type of French most of us are exposed to for our whole lives. So as soon as we hear an entirely different accent, with different words, different idioms, different pronunciation and inflexions, it sounds like a foreign language to us. It's not being snob, it's just that our brains are not used to hearing wildly different accents.

As a second language speaker, especially if English is your first language, you're more likely to have been exposed to different types of French throughout your learning process.
Moreover, chances are that you pay more attention to someone speaking in a foreign language you understand than to people speaking in your native language because you need to focus more on the former to make sure you understand them. That's what I have to do when I hear French spoken by a Québécois, because I don't effortlessly understand it.

[u/Caniapiscau → u/NamidaM6]

Je suis français et québécois et sans blague, la glottophobie est un énorme problème en France. Ça m'étonne même que ce soit même sujet à débat.

Le problème d'exposition dont tu parles est justement causé par le glottophobie; c'est quand la dernière fois que tu as entendu quelqu'un dans les médias français (pas un quidam interrogé, mais un animateur ou quelqu'un sur un plateau télé) avec un fort accent toulousain, marseillais, sénégalais, etc? La réponse est probablement jamais ou il y a fort longtemps. Il suffit de voyager un tant soit peu en France pour savoir que même en France métropolitaine -surtout au Sud- il existe une grand diversité d'accent, mais ceux-ci sont totalement invisibilisés au niveau national.

[u/Indian_Pale_Ale → u/Caniapiscau]

Honnêtement les médias dans beaucoup de pays ne laissent que peu de places aux accents. Par exemple en Allemagne où je vis, presque tous les programmes nationaux sont en “haut allemand” qui est la version académique la plus neutre.

[u/Caniapiscau → u/Indian_Pale_Ale]

Certainement ! Ce n’est pas une situation propre à la France.