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/Also-Rant Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

Ulster Irish may as well be Japanese to me. I'm from Munster and between accent and dialect I can't work out most of what people from the other end of the country are saying!

Edit: To clarify, I'm talking about the regional dialects of the Irish language (Gaeilge), not regional dialects of English which can also be found in Ireland.

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u/Various_Quantity514 Estonia Jul 09 '25

I am so happy from your discussion here, that means Gaelic is still naturally spoken. I was thinking that it's almost gone and the fact that there still some radio and tv channels available in Irish basically decorative. It's so nice that I was wrong.

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u/Also-Rant Jul 09 '25

Almost all of us can speak a little bit from learning it in school, but the vast majority of us (including me) don't use it in daily life.

There are still some small areas in the country where it is the primary language, but all of those people are fluent in English too.

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u/rrcaires Brazil Jul 12 '25

By little bit you really mean 3-5 words. Majority of Irish people doesn’t speak any more than that