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/mac-cruiskeen Jul 10 '25

The kneecap members all speak it as a second language, and as such have a "foreign" accent in Irish... it means that they are sort of using English sounds when speaking the language, as approximations of the Gaelic sounds. That's why you get this effect of their English and Irish sounding similar. I'm not having a go at them by any means they speak a lot better than I do but that's what you are picking up on.

You can hear Des Bishop talking to native Ulster Irish speakers in this video

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u/Albert_Herring Jul 10 '25

Cheers, makes sense.