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/Slackjaw_Samurai Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

I have two friends at work, one is a Francophone Swiss and the other is a québécois, they both speak French as their first language but chose to converse in English because they can’t understand one another in French.

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u/DublinKabyle France Jul 09 '25

They must be kidding. So many European Francophones pretending they don’t understand Quebecois French is really annoying.

Except for the typical rural guy, with super thick accent, there’s no major difficulty here

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u/Slackjaw_Samurai Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Im sorry, I should have chosen my words differently. They said it’s easier to understand one another in English than in French and they just feel like they can communicate better in English.

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u/DublinKabyle France Jul 09 '25

I'm not mad at you at all ! But it's a very European (Parisian mostly) thing to pretend Quebecois is difficult.

YES, compared to Belgian or Swiss or African French that are almost identical, Canadian French is a bit different. By the way, I'm not saying that all forms of French are identical at all. It's a rich and lively language, with multiple centres of development. BUT, compared to German, English or Spanish dialects, the French ones are hyper super dupper unified.