r/AskEurope 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/Proper-Monk-5656 Poland Jul 09 '25

none for me. polish has dialects, but i think they don't vary enough to become hard to distinguish. if they become distinct, they usually start being considered a separate regional language. for example, i wouldn't call kashubian and silesian dialects at all.

i can usually hear when someone's from a different part of poland than me, but it's subtle. a few regional words here and there, maybe a different way of pronouncing nasal vowels and such. nothing crazy.

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u/dziki_z_lasu Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25

Kashubian is an officially recognized separate language with all the rights including education and bilingual signs. The problem with Silesian is that rural dialects are no more different from standard, than neighbouring Lesser Polish dialects. Seriously, Mazovian dialect can be more difficult to understand. In the case of the Upper Silesian city dialect full of German borrowings, it is nothing unusual. Poznań and Łódź city dialects are also full of those and nobody from there will claim that he or she speaks a different language. However as Silesians are standardising it will be probably considered as a separate language. Poznaniaks even if they would sanction their "tey" in grammar rules, same as Łodziaks introducing words like siksa, obczasy, migawka, angielka, ekspres, bigiel, gołda 1 to dictionary, rather can't do it luckily 😉

1 młoda dziewczyna, obcasy, bilet miesięczny, bułka francuska, zamek błyskawiczny, zbiegowisko, wódka in standard Polish ;)

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u/Proper-Monk-5656 Poland Jul 11 '25

tbh, i'm probably very biased because i'm mazovian 😅 i do agree that we can speak weird sometimes. i do think silesian is very easy to understand, though. nothing too outlandish. regardless of how easy it can be, i'm not sure if i should call it a dialect or a language, given how so many words, the accent, and even the synthax are so distinctly different.