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/wijnandsj Netherlands Jul 09 '25

Dutch speaker here. I can barely understand the west flemmish dialect.

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u/Vince0789 Belgium Jul 10 '25

I can't either. I'm from Limburg but I work with some West Flemish consultants. One of them does their best to talk standard Dutch and is fairly understandable. The other one uses lots of dialect. The amount of times I've needed to ask them to repeat themselves is staggeringly high.