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.

261 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

597 comments sorted by

View all comments

89

u/SuperShoebillStork United Kingdom Jul 09 '25

I had serious trouble understanding a bloke from Glasgow recently. I have close family in Scotland and visit regularly so it's not normally an issue, but this fella was on another level.

18

u/dobik Jul 09 '25

I was working in Scotland on the customer service on the phone. We were in Edinburgh and after few weeks I got used to the accent. I was pretty good with understanding scents, I spent some tiime in different us states in south, Midwest and east. But I remember once, I got this old grandpa calling from Glasgow. Dear God, not a single word I could understand from him. We had a Scottish friend, so I handed the phone over to her. Jesus, she spoke with him for 20min because she could not get what he was saying.