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.


43 comments

  1. French spoken in Canada definitely. Written form is ok, but they have a lot of expressions and words we do not use.

    French used in Europe is quite a uniform language nowadays. We have a few regional languages which are not really related to the French language (Breton language which is *edit* a celtic language, Alsacian which is a Germanic dialect, Basque, Corsican, Provencal). The toughest to understand for me would be the Picard (with the very famous Ch’ti dialect deriving from it).

  2. I was going to say Pontic Greek and Rhoditika!

    I think reason for that is because they talk really fast and it’s the closest dialect to ancient Greek.

  3. Cypriot Greek is not difficult; my mother-in-law made sure 😀

    But yes, Pontian Greek is where I have big time struggles.

  5. 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.

  9. I had serious trouble understanding a bloke from Glasgow recently. I have close family in Scotland and visit regularly so it’s not normally an issue, but this fella was on another level.

  10. Vorarlbergerisch for me, I am from Upper Austria, which is already sometimes heavy on the dialect, but when someone from beyond the mountains speaks I can catch a few familiar words and just go on context. I understand Swiss German better than that. 

  11. Csángó Hungarian spoken in [Bukovina](https://alchetron.com/cdn/bukovina-e30bbd0f-fb2e-4a8c-b289-732a789d787-resize-750.jpeg). It’s a nearly extinct dialect and many people confuse the real deal with people who are no longer native Hungarian speakers and just speak Transylvanian Hungarian with a thick Romanian accent. You don’t really run into it in your day to day life, so people are not used to it at all, that’s one of the reasons why it can be difficult.

  12. Jamaican English. 

    I worked customer service once and we had Jamaican clients and I had to profusely apologise and ask them if they could enunciate a more…queen’s English, because I couldn’t understand a lot of what they said.

    Well it worked; I told them I was Irish and they were all very gracious and gave it a shot. After about 4-6 hours worth of calls I got the hang of their dialect and now it’s grand.

  14. When I was in Switzerland as a German, I didn’t understand anything 

  15. If we follow the government’s designation of what counts as a dialect would the hardest definitely be Övdalian/Älvdalsmål. However, there is a movement to categorise it as its own language, which is just how non-understandable it is.

  16. Italian “dialects” are actually proper languages with theirr own dialects. I have trouble understanding anyone besides my own, Tuscany (cause it’s what was used to create Italian) roman (cause it’s basically Italian with an accent) and some apulian from Bari

  17. Highlander I guess, since it’s one of the very few leftover Polish dialects, and the only one that’s still in common use

  18. Probably the Prekmurje dialect, their vocabulary is something else completely compared to standard Slovene.

  19. Portuguese spoken in São Miguel (Açores).

    Exactly the same grammar, 99% same vocabulary but with a strong accent taken from 16th century French immigrants

  20. Within Bosnia and Herzegovina we have three official languages, which are basically the same. Funny thing is, there is basically 0 dialectal diversity within the country save for accents and some regionalisms.

    However, if we broaden the search to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro -> The islanders and Istrians might as well be speaking Elvish (the ones that actually talk in their dialect).

    Other difficult ones are the south of Serbia and the north of Croatia (Zagorje, Međimurje).

  21. Sometimes have a bit trouble with Swiss German and Vorarlbergerisch, but a big contender are also North-German dialects. Those are very far removed from Bairisch.

  22. In parts of Sardinia they speak a language that is not a dialect of Italian but more of Catalan. Completely different from the national language.
    But even without going that far, most “dialects” of southern regions are very difficult to understand for people from other parts of the country.

  23. I can understand all of them, but as a speaker of a western dialect the ones part of the eastern dialects group are the hardest for me to understand.

    Specifially the Peräpohjola dialects I think, which are spoken in Lapland. As I wrote, I do understand them, even Meänkieli which is considered a different language for certain reasons, but they definitely are weird.

  25. Prekmurje dialect, and the way that older Hungarian Slovenes speak. Very difficult to understand anything. Prekmurje is a region in the northeast of Slovenia, and it used to be part of Hungary till the Trianon treaty.

    I live west of ljubljana, where Rovtarski dialect is spoken. We have valleys here in my area, a couple of kilometers apart, where local dialects can differ quite a lot. But Prekmurje, it sounds like something from a different world entirely.

  26. Dialects from southern Norway, around Kristiansand area. I don’t have much issues understanding them normally, but if someone with that dialect catches me off guard my brain has to recalibrate a few seconds before I understand them properly, which I don’t experience with most other dialects.

  27. Slovakia. The eastern dialects. They seem to be more distant from standard Slovak than Czech. Other parts speak more or less standard Slovak except Zahorie (a small region in the North-west) but it sounds like just a mix of Slovak and Czech.

  28. Swiss german for me, but it depends on where, because even Switzerland has different dialects

  30. Probably Hantec (the local dialect of Brno).

    > Pontic Greek

    I am half Pontic but only know a few words and phrases like «δώραεν?» which is «τι ώρα είναι?» in standard modern Greek.

  31. Älvdalska is likely the hardest Swedish dialect – to the point where it should really be called a separate language. Linguists and speakers of the variant often want it to be considered a minority language though – legally speaking – it’s a dialect.

    There are also variants of Finland Swedish that can be really hard to understand – Finland Swedish overall isn’t too bad, but some local variations can be tricky. Famously, Ostrobothnia has some really tricky local dialects.

    For more typical regional Swedish variations, I wouldn’t say there’s any of them that are particularly hard to understand – it’s more about how thick they are. There are people who grew up with the same dialect that I did (Västgötska), but who speak in a way that is near impossible to comprehend. The same principle goes for some other dialects that are considered hard (Scanian, Gotländska, Jämtländska).

  33. I’m going to say Scots but I’m aware they claim it’s a language not a dialect.

    In which case Filipino English. They constantly slip into Taglish and even when they don’t it’s syntax matches Tagalog not English.

    Geordie if it’s from England.

  34. Resian and Prekmurje dialects of Slovene are almost impossible to understand. They sound like completely different languages

  35. The sheer number of strong accents and dialects across the Anglosphere works in our favour, I think. You kind of get used to deciphering it. But with that said, I’ve struggled a lot with various West Indian Pidgeon dialects. And occasionally with more extreme Irish or Scottish from rural areas. Strong Indian accents are a real challenge, as well.

  36. I talk to a lot of customers on the phone. I work in Germany and am German, but we have international business customers. There is one Swiss customer, I think he tries to speak high German. But he has to be at least 80, very brittle voice and I can hardly understand him. I do not usually have a problem understanding Swiss people who try to speak standard German.

  37. Ah… it has to be **Vendelbomål**. Like they never pause to breathe and it’s made of vowels. I honestly don’t understand a singular word people say if they speak purely in this dialect.

    And also I struggle with **Synnejysk (Plattdänisch)** – but unlike Vendelbomål, there’s at least words you recognize.

    So old dialect from the far north of Jutland, and an also old, but still very much used dialect from the far south of Jutland by the border to Germany. I am from Zealand, and so has never really been exposed to those dialects all that much, might be some of the answer.

  38. Out of the plethora of dialects I understand those closer to me and tend to miss those further away. 

    Disregarding other languages spoken in the Netherlands the North Western group is fine mostly. But depending on what is spoken and how fast I might still miss the essence.

    Zuid-Hollands
    Westhoeks
    Waterlands* en Volendams*
    Zaans*
    Kennemerlands
    West-Fries*
    Bildts, Midslands, Stadsfries en Amelands*

    But anywhere else is a stretch.

     Most difficult?

    Eastern-Limburgish-Ripuardic
    Western Flamish.

    I remember visiting a friend’s grandfather in eastern Netherlands. Achterhoek.The grandfather switched to ” proper Dutch” ABN  for me as visitor there. His grandson almost had a stroke because he had never heard his grandfather speak anything but dialect in his life. We were in our twenties then. Dutch dialects are not accents. 

  39. As a Portuguese speaker, the first that comes to mind is the **Micaelense** accent from São Miguel island in the Azores. It’s probably the only Portuguese dialect that most people are familiar with, yet often requires subtitles even for native speakers…

    What makes it unique is its use of vowel sounds that are extremely rare, not just in Portuguese, but in the entire Ibero-Romance language family, which includes languages from Occitan in the east to Portuguese in the west. In Micaelense, the usual Portuguese /u/ sound is replaced with a near-front rounded vowel, pronounced closer to the front of the mouth, quite like the French *u* in *lune*. There’s also another vowel, a rounded version of “e” (technically [ø]), that’s almost unheard of elsewhere in Portuguese.

    These phonetic quirks are more commonly found in Gallo-Romance languages (like French or Franco-Provençal), which helps make the Micaelense accent sound almost alien to most other lusophones.

    And we haven’t even gotten to the **Americanisms**, like the quircky *vaca-miquelina* (which literally translates to “Miquelina cow”) but actually means… vacuum cleaner. Yeah, I know… I can’t understand it either ahaha!

    The Algarve accent can be tricky too, but surprisingly (at least to me, considering how many Portuguese vacation there), it’s way less widely recognized than the Micaelense accent. Interestingly, there’s a historical link: settlers from the Algarve were among the first to populate São Miguel, and you can definitely hear some shared pronunciation traits. Still… we don’t need subtitles to understand people from the Algarve.

    For less commonly encountered varieties, there’s the Portuguese spoken in Macau, also known as **Patuá**. It’s a dialect where many words have evolved so much that they’re hard to decipher without context or subtitles. For example, “avô-avó” means grandparents in Patuá. In standard Portuguese, it sounds like someone saying “grandfather-grandmother,” which creates unexpected confusion. You expect something simpler, like “avós.”

  41. We have an insane amount of dialects, with many internal variations. Hard to pin point what are the most difficult. There are som dialects in Jæren, Trøndelag and Gudbrandsdalen, that you would not think are Norwegian.

  42. I’m from south-east England and live in the Midlands and have lived in the M62 corridor. Of European English dialects the hardest time I’ve had understanding someone has been with some lowland Scots (in Auchinleck), but Doric and some west of Ireland accents can be pretty tough too. Obviously, there are fairly good grounds for considering Scots and maybe hiberno-English as separate languages – Scots/Lallans has to some extent been formalised as such, and if it wasn’t for the Union I suspect English and Scots could easily have been regarded as separate as Danish and Norwegian are.

    Outside Europe, I had a lot of trouble with the African-American dialects/sociolects in The Wire for the first few episodes I watched (and that was of course mediated by interactions with standard American speakers and the narrative forms of the series itself – interacting with Real People^(TM) can be an order of magnitude harder).

  43. There’s this dialect called: “Sønderjysk” it’s impossible to understand, because it mixes Danish and German and uses its own unique words as well.

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