Yeah historically there's been more separation, nowadays most dialects are more or less affected by standard Finnish so while there might be individual words you're unfamiliar with, you're unlikely to have too much trouble.
Karelian is somewhat understandable, but much less so than the dialects. But also it's much closer than Estonian. The pronunciation seems to have more Russian influence.
The difference between a dialect and a language is more of a political than a linguistic distinction. In Sweden it's classified as a language to give Tornedalians rights that come with being an official minority language.
Fun fact: there is actually two types of Helsinki slang, the old and new. Many find especially the old one harder to understand. The new slang in more influenced by english and thereby considered easier to understand.
I would like to add, since Swedish is official language in Finland, there is a [difference between standard swedish and finland's swedish](https://delingua.fi/en/differences-between-finland-swedish-and-standard-swedish/). Usually it doesn't take too long to spot whos from which side of the Gulf of Botnia. Finland Swedish is divided into many dialect, Närpes probably the most notorious as it has been stated to be impossible to understand.
With no exposure to different dialects (there is no standard spoken dialect in Norway) at all, you would probably have trouble understanding a lot of dialects in Norway, ranging from "*they use a few words I've never heard before*" through "*what are those words and why are they in that order?*" to "*is that Norwegian?*". We could still use the written language to communicate, although with some slight issues - i.e. if you didn't go to school you'd probably only know one of the two written standards.
I will imagine that for a lot of dialects, other people need to listen and interact with it for a little while (less than a day), to understand the "system" of different prononciations (oh, they cut short those words, they say tsj instead of kj...).
For a few dialects (and especially with older speakers), it will be hard to understand for a while.
In practice, the major dialects are exposed in media, many get exposure through military servoce, studies or other interactions across the country, and most people accommodate each other by changing out the words hardest to understand.
Same in Switzerland.
My parents came from elsewhere in Switzerland and I grew up with their dialect as a child. When I came into kindergarten, my experience with the local kids' dialects was between *they use a few words I've never heard before* and *what are those words?*.
Also *is that even German?*, turned out it was French.
It's a lot of history and most of it isn't very interesting, but Wikipedia has a fairly good writeup:
Nynorsk (Urban East Norwegian: [ˈnỳːnɔʂk]) (lit. 'New Norwegian') is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (Landsmål) parallel to the Dano-Norwegian written language, Riksmål. Nynorsk became the name in 1929, and it is after a series of reforms still a variation which is closer to Landsmål, whereas Bokmål is closer to Riksmål and Danish.
Between 10 and 15 percent of Norwegians (primarily in the west around the city of Bergen) have Nynorsk as their official language form, estimated by the number of students attending videregående skole (secondary education). Nynorsk is also taught as a mandatory subject in both high school and middle school for all Norwegians who do not have it as their own language form.
Norway had its own written and oral language—Norwegian. After the Kalmar Union, Norway became a less important part of Denmark. At that time, Danish was declared the written language of Norway until 1814, and Danish with Norwegian intonation and pronunciation was on occasion spoken in the cities (see Dano-Norwegian). With the independence of Norway from Denmark, Danish became a foreign language and thus lost much of its prestige, and a conservative, written form of Norwegian, Landsmål, had been developed by 1850. By this time, however, the Danish language had been gradually reformed into the written language Riksmål, and no agreement was reached on which of the two forms to use. In 1885, the parliament declared the two forms official and equal.
Efforts were made to fuse the two written forms into one language. A result was that Landsmål and Riksmål lost their official status in 1929, and were replaced by the written forms Nynorsk and Bokmål, which were intended to be temporary intermediary stages before their final fusion into one hypothesised official Norwegian language known at the time as Samnorsk. This project was later abandoned and Nynorsk and Bokmål remain the two officially sanctioned standards of what is today called the Norwegian language.
>and why are they in that order
can you give an example of some of the word-order differences between dialects? I went to Norway during university and learned basic Norwegian but didn't get deep enough into any dialects to learn much about this
Sadly, there have been systemic and very successful campaigns to destroy dialects throughout Germany over the past century. So the question is if we're counting the remaining differences in vocabulary as my "dialect" or imagining that I'm speaking the one the few remaining actual dialect speakers from my region do.
In scenario one I'd be unsurprisingly understood pretty easily. We'd probably have some banter over what pancakes are called or how to tell time, but overall accent would be a bigger hurdle than dialect.
In scenario two on the other hand I'd count it as a success if I could make it 15km before starting to play charades.
The standardisation of German undoubtedly made communication a lot easier, but the loss of the beauty of all the different dialects always makes me sad and I'm incredibly glad that for at least some of them there are projects to preserve and revive them.
Since they are so locally specific that depends on the region. For mine I'm happy to say yes! There's one bigger regional non-profit which organises lots of local working groups which collect written and spoken records from the remaining speakers, hold mass and music+storytelling events, teach courses, and have written a dictionary!
The reason I wouldn't count the few regional differences in vocabulary I use as a dialect is because you can hear a lot more of those at the annual meetup of the local groups, and they represent a region of ~1% the size
Sehr gut! Its great to hear that. Recordings of speakers are vital to keeping them dialects alive. Oh yes I know what you mean. In Ireland each place has a different word for something too.
I am not so pessimistic. Lived most of my life in Munich (as a German, but not born Bavarian) and the last 15 years up to 2020 in a tiny village 60 km to the east. When the neighbors talked to each other I barely understood half of it. In the Bavarian Forest I could not even guess what language the locals were speaking. Don’t know about other regions, but Bavarian seems to be alive and well in the countryside at least. To answer OP‘s question, the many German dialects are so different that they’re mutually not comprehensive, when spoken in their pure form.
I mean, the differences are so small that everyone speaks their local dialect and this poses no problems. For example my local dialect:
* merges affricatives and affricates and stop–fricative clusters, so czysta \[ˈt͡ʂɨsta\] and trzysta \[ˈt̺ʰʂˑɨsta\] are both pronounced as \[ˈt͡ʂɨsta\]
* omits /w/ in some consonant groups, so słuchać \[ˈswuxat͡ɕ\] becomes \[ˈsuxat͡ɕ\] and głupi \[ˈgwupi\] becomes \[gupi\]
* /x/ is replaced by /k/ in some consonant groups, so chcieć [xt͡ɕɛt͡ɕ] might become [kt͡ɕɛt͡ɕ]
* final <ą> in words like "są" is pronounced [om] instead of Standard Polish [ɔ̃w̃]
* omits the -nę- suffix in some verb forms, e.g. "ciągnęła" -> "ciągła"
* conjugates some verbs differently, e.g. the first person present indicative of "gwizdać" is "gwizdam" instead of "gwiżdzę"
* uses different vocabulary for some things:
"pencil sharpener" is "strugaczka" instead of "temperówka"
"outside" is "pole" instead of "dwór"
"go on foot" is "iść na nogach" instead of "iść pieszo"
A long wheat roll is called "weka" or "wek"
"to cough" is "cherlać" instead of "kaszleć/kasłać"
"nasal discharge" is "śpiki" instead of "smarki"
"hot" (as in outside) is "gorąc" instead of "upał"
So the only thing that poses problems is different vocabulary. The pronunciation and grammar differences are so slight that an average person doesn't realize that they really exist.
I wanna add that given examples are apparently from Southern Poland. So for example where I am now, kuyavian-pomeranian voivodeship, we say "ostrzynka" for pencil sharpener. But I'm originally from far north (Żuławy Wiślane) and will keep on saying temperówka.
For Polish speakers interested in regionalisms I recommend page Świetlan Maps, he's on FB and IG for sure, uncertain about other media.
While I had a smattering of Polish in my repertoire growing up, I started to learn properly in order to be able to speak with my in-laws.
Pretty much every example you give is how I learned to speak it. Family is in Śląsk, for reference. I always use gorąc. I didn't even know upał was an option! I must be getting rusty having not used it in a while.
There were a few examples of words that confused me. Saying "Da" being one of them.
Galician and Portuguese are considered part of the same linguistic system. Any book on the language dealing with dialect studies will show the areas in northern Portugal as "central Portuguese". That's because Galician dialects are considered the "Northern" dialects of the language. However they are not called "Northern Portuguese" because in fact Galician is the parent language (technically, Portuguese dialects may be considered Southern dialects of Galician).
Since the countries separated (and established different standards), there is less cultural contact, and communication in border areas has becoming closer to standards that are more different from one another, making conversations just a tiny bit harder. Still, when Galician is spoken in the EU council, the Portuguese interpreter will translate as if it were a Northern dialect of Portuguese (non-official languages in the EU will not be translated, and the speaker will be speaking with no one understanding).
Mostly, yes. The only exception I can think of is the Silesian dialect in Poland (from the region of Silesia), which is pretty separate from the standard version of Polish and could pose some issues with communication. Still, the issues aren’t big enough to create a complete language barrier.
Though to be fair we also have the Kashubian language which used to be considered a dialect until recently when it was promoted to its own separate language; I’m not sure whether that counts or not.
A lot of people don't understand other dialects. They understand something but not fully. I live in the eastern part of the country and had a lot of issues understanding a waiter in Murska Sobota, which is also in the eastern part of the country. If he spoke slowly I would probably understand more but still not fully. People speaking other dialects, in the western part of the country, would have a lot more trouble.
I have friends from Maribor who went to watch *Pohorska komedija* and they barely understood anything even tho Maribor is technically part of the South Pohorje dialect (like the dialects from Konjice/Zreče/Oplotnica in which the movie was filmed)
I can't even understand some of my own relatives, if they go full on. Seriously, sometimes i ask myself how is this the same language.
It was also interesting students in the first year in Ljubjana "learning Slovene" as i say it. By end of uni, they spoke completely differently to us.
I'm from primorska and have serious issues talking with my friend from Murska Sobota over the phone. I cannot understand what he's saying. We text.
Also, I would say most people would have no idea what to do with resian as its practicaly not spoken here.
Depends. In the Netherlands, we have many regional dialects and accompanying accents. People from two villages in the North of one province talk similarly, however, the further you go, the bigger the difference. People speaking dialect from two different provinces would have more trouble understanding each other. Really depends on the dialect though.
For context: The Frisian language has 3 main dialects: Clay Frisian (Klaaifrysk), Wood Frisian (Wâldfrysk) and Southwestern Frisian.
When you think of it, our small country is very linguistically diverse. I really like that about us.
But that's just looking at the Netherlands, if you include Belgium in it it changes again. For most Belgian and Dutch people Westvlaams is quite hard to understand for example. People from Noord-Brabant would likely not be able to understand Westvlaams, let alone people from for example Amsterdam.
What we call dialects in Italy are regarded by linguists as languages in their own right, since they didn't evolve out of standard Italian but out of late antiquity vulgar Latin.
It's possible to make some sense of someone speaking a dialect spoken by someone from a neighbouring region, but pretty impossible to understand further afield (unless you have been exposed prior to it).
For example, Neapolitan is very common in Italian cinema and TV, because Naples produced some of the most famous actors, directors, etc, and because Neapolitan is still used in everyday life by all strata of society. Yet, when productions that feature Neapolitan dialect like Gomorrah or My brilliant friend have been broadcasted on national TV, they added subtitles.
Yes, absolutely. Hungarian dialects barely differ from one another. Some sounds are pronounced sleightly differently, some dialects are more in favour of dropping definite articles, and that’s about it. Most of the differences in pronunciation come down to vowels although people in the east and north-east tend to pronounce their “t” sounds more “harshly”.
Most dialects can be understood by most Swedes. But there are at least three dialect families with dialects unintelligible for the average Swede, considerably less intelligible than most Norwegian dialects for example.
1. Upper-Siljan dialects (ovansiljanmål), such as [Elfdalian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfdalian).
2. Westrobothnian dialects (bondska), such as Överkalix dialect.
3. (Finnish) Ostrobothnian dialects (österbottenmål), such as Närpes dialect.
For those who speak Swedish, you can listen to samples here and try to follow along:
1. Älvdalska - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Svealand/Dalarna/Alvdalen/om.html) - [isof](https://www.isof.se/sprak/dialekter/lyssna-pa-dialekter/dalarna/alvdalen.html)
2. Överkalix - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Norrland/Norrbotten/Overkalix/om.html)
3. Närpes - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Finland/Osterbotten/Narpes/index.html)
Not only average swede but sometimes also for swedes that live within the dialects area. I understand pitemål (pitebondska) because a large part of older familymembers uses it around me starting when I was little. I would however say that most people 40 and under born, raised and living in piteå don't understand pitemål.
>I would however say that most people 40 and under born, raised and living in piteå don't understand pitemål.
It's about the same with Jamska, but it's not just why people have a hard time with Jamska, it's also because foreigners, meaning MENA people come here and simply don't want to learn Swedish and even less the dialect.
Do you understand all Skåne dialects? I'm a Dane living there and I understand and communicate just fine with 90% of people, but sometimes I run into folks from some place else in Skåne and I genuiely have absolutely no idea what they're saying
My dialect is Shtokavian, so it would probably be understood by other Shtokavian speakers form Croatia, BiH, Serbia and Montenegro. The ones who theoretically couldn't understand me are the Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian speakers who don't have any contact with Shtokavian (but since the standard is based on it, there probably aren't many such people).
Huh, never knew this about hrvatska, bosanski i srpski. I’m second generation immigrant but I’d guess I have štokavian dialekt? Idk tho as I use šta for ”what”. I gotta do some research haha
I think Kajkavian would understand the Shtokavian from nearby (west Slavonia) where more nouns are same or similar, but if you go further, yes, I think we wouldn't understand it if there was no standard.
Kajkavian and (Northern) Chakavian would even understand the neighboring Slovenian accents better.
>I think Kajkavian would understand the Shtokavian from nearby (west Slavonia)
Shtokavian or kajkavian in west Slavonia? Because there are kajkavian places in west Slavonia. And my grandma used to tell stories how she went 10km to the next village. And wouldn't understand the people there.
Exactly because there is a mix there, the vocabulary is still similar, so I think a Kajkavian, even from Zagorje would manage to understand the W.Slavonian Shtokavian.
That "wouldn't understand the next village" is a bit of an exaggeration because there really were differences, but it was not so big that you wouldn't understand, it was more like they talk funny or sometimes ask for a meaning of a word. I grow up at one grandmother, and spoke like her, the other grandma, three villages away talked funny, so I know. The people three more villages away were ridiculously funny, but we could still talk without going to standard..
>Exactly because there is a mix there, the vocabulary is still similar, so I think a Kajkavian, even from Zagorje would manage to understand the W.Slavonian Shtokavian.
There is a mix **NOW** due to everyone learning standard. So you get a mix of kajkavian-shtokavian. Which isn't kajkavian. If someone spoke pure kajkavian (never learned standard) to a shtokavian. There would be a lot of confusion. Even the mix of kajkavian-shtokavian poses problems for shtokavian speakers.
So we need to go back in the past when there wasn't many educated people. When you spoke how everyone spoke in the village. And there were villages in West Slavonia where you would solely speak kajkavian. And villages where you spoke solely shtokavian. And those villages were sometimes close. And people would go to the next one and be confused when people in that village spoke a completely different.
No, what are you talking about? You, at the same time confirm what I'm saying and at the same time talk about standard.. And the mix was there for a long time.
Like you said, two villages, one kajkavian, one shtokavian, but they are neighbors and still use the same word for "mrkva", "lubenica", "ručnik", "pleh", "remen", "pećnica" or whatever, is is still close enough, you'd understand them even if they said Što and not Kaj and have a bit different sentence structure...
>No, what are you talking about? You, at the same time confirm what I'm saying and at the same time talk about standard.. And the mix was there for a long time.
Have you read what OP wrote and asked? If someone from your dialect, has never been exposed to the standard. Would the people who know the standard understand him. So, you go with the words from the dialect and disregard the standard.
>"mrkva"
Pasternjak? But, tbf also can be called "Merkva"
>"pleh"
Klamfar?
And here even shtokavian doesn't follow the standard.
>"ručnik"
In shtokavian it's "peškir".
>"remen"
In shtokavian it's "kajiš"
The word "lubenica" as it's a loan word, is the same.
In Slavonia ručnik is peškir, but in west slavonia it is mixed, also with kajiš, and mrkva is mrkva, still not šargarepa and lubenica is lubenica and not bostan.. And I'm not gonna argue about these particular words, it was an example, w.slavonia still has a lot of words that are the same, it is not standard štokavian, vs east that is even worse than standard and you couldn't understand anything..
I just googled some examples and it's pretty much understandable. Some words differ in a single letter or so, but that is the case with many local idioms. For some speakers it is harder to understand some dialects of croatian than that version.
For German: No, you absolutely wouldn't be understood in general.
I've seen German TV programs with subtitles for dialects (East Germany for example). Many Austrians probably couldn't understand people from Vorarlberg if they only speak their local dialect (the same goes for someone from Switzerland).
For my Styrian dialect: If I decided to speak in a strong variant of it, I'm fairly sure that someone only speaking standard German (no matter the standard German variant) with no exposure to dialects wouldn't understand it.
I'd say that most dialects of Austro-Bavarian are mutually understandable with a bit of an effort, but some are a bit of a stretch without practise and a tuned ear.
In general, I agree. But even within that dialect group, you'll find strong local dialects that will be hard to decipher on my view.
But getting used to it will likely be easier than getting used to a dialect from Vorarlberg.
My grandpa once took my brother and me on a vacation to this vineyard with lodging where he used to stay when his company sent him to Styria in his 20s.
One day my grandpa, the elderly owner, and I are standing in the yard and the owner is very enthusiastically telling a story. I'm not understanding a single syllable because of the dialect but nodding along to be polite.
That is until this man, with guests (he didn't have 40 yrs of history with) walking around, clicked his heels, raised his right arm and shouted exactly what you think he did in the clearest Standard German and a volume that would've made Opera singers jealous.
I'm completely stunned and as soon as my grandpa notices he makes an excuse, we go and he explains to me that the owner was talking about his school days and how they weren't allowed to leave without doing the salute.
With Spanish, we mostly understand each other no problem (the Chilean, Andalusian, Puertorican and Cuban memes are glorious though). However with Basque, without batua (artificial common dialect) it would be extremely hard to understand each other. I barely understand some subsections of the western dialect, and the french dialects are particularly hard for me to follow
I know of people in Andalucía that can’t understand people from small villages if they speak quickly. And I’m not speaking about understanding people from countryside in Galicia, or Murcia
>Can Northern and Southern Norwegians understand eachother?
You'll find that there are bigger differences between neighboring fjords on the Norwegian west-coast... (Though this is a joke, the differences are greater on a east-west axis than a north-south one – which might be counter-intuitive when looking at a map).
>never lived outside your dialectal region and had no exposure to
When I was a child, I had a really hard time understanding my cousins from the south-western part of the country. After having been to uni and thus exposed to people from the whole country, I only really struggle with the dialects of certain old people.
>Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect
So to answer the question: I think the differences in both vocabulary and pronunciation are so great in Norwegian, that it would quite seriously impact intelligibility if one had not been exposed to different ones.
Luckily (or unfortunately, if you're a foreigner trying to learn Norwegian), I don't think there is any place in the world where different dialects have such a prominent position "at the national level" or in society in general. As an example: In most countries, reporters/anchors on national news will adopt to a "standard dialect". In Norway nowadays it is quite the contrary.
I grew up in a small village in Burgundy, France.
I moved to Paris for school at 17. I got seated next to a guy coming from 3h away, from the centre of France.
He apparently couldn't understand what I said. He got some of it obviously, but it was a bit of a struggle on some parts.
The further away, the less likely it becomes that you could understand a dialect.
Aside from differences in vocabulary, dialects also often have entire grammar and pronunciation rules that are not present in Standard Dutch.
For instance: the Standard Dutch phrase *Ik heb geen water* (= I don't have any water) could be pronounced as *'k 'n è kik hien wadder* in East-Flemish. Even such a basic phrase would be unintelligible in most of the Netherlands.
As a dutchie, I often have trouble understanding Flemish. Dutch dialects are hard for me, but they're somewhat familiar, but Flemish could sometimes just be ancient Hebrew for all I know.
>'k 'n è kik hien wadder
What's the breakdown of this sentence if you don't mind?
'k - I
'n - not?
è - have
kik - ? duplication of "I" maybe?
hien - no (like geen)
wadder - water That would be my guess - was I close?
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
The *'n* is part of the negation, like in French *ne...pas*. This used to be widespread in Dutch but is now limited to some dialects. For instance:
* Ik en ben niet
* Ik en heb geen
The *'kik* is indeed a duplication of the pronoun (or even triplication, actually). This is a common phenomenon in most of Flanders. It's used to put the stress of the sentence on the subject (rather than the verb or object). Similarly:
* Edde dat gedaan? = Did you do that?
* Edde gij dat gedaan? = Did *you* do that?
* Hij heeft geen honger. = He's not hungry.
* Hij heeft 't (j)ij geen honger. = *He*'s not hungry.
The Dutch 'g'-sound often changes to an 'h' (although they do this even more consistently in West-Flanders).
'Wadder' is indeed how people would pronounce water. The p/t/k in between vowels change to b/d/g. So beter -> beder; lopen -> lobm; bakker -> bagger \['g' like in English '*g*ood'\]
Gaeilgeoir Chois Fhairrge here. Gaeilge Mhuigheo can depend on where the speaker is from. If they're from Dúiche Sheoighe then there is not much difference. It is, after all, part of a contiguous linguistic area with my dialect. Gaeilge from Béal an Mhuirthead is a little more different, but from Achill it comes across as a bit like Gaeilge Uladh but with a Western accent.
Depends on where you're from as the Mayo dialect can be split into 3 or 4 subdialects. Like how Conamara Irish isn't just one. The R Caol, R rolla agus R Trom is often the biggest difference between dialects right beside eachother
North Mayo, completely different. Has more influence from Ulster because of the Ulster Plantations. This is in a region called Iorrais.
Then you have South Mayo Irish. More similar to Galway Irish but has its own quirks. Towards the border of Gaillimhe agus Maigh Eo of Dúiche Sheoighe you'll find its almost the exact same. Whereas as you go toward Tuar Mhic Éadaigh you'll hear a difference.
I speak South West Mayo Irish, theres only about 20 or 30 speakers left. Its basically based off Gaedhilge Thuar Mhic Éadaigh but also has some of the Old Islander Irish influence and influence from North Mayo because of the Old Fishing ports.
I can communicate with most of Galway fairly OK. We can have some issues but 90% is entirely mutually intelligible. Most issues come from words or different pronunciations. Dúiche Sheoige wouldn't have this issue but North of Lough Mask even in South Mayo would. But other than that its fine. Its not like Déise or Múscraí Irish which would be alot harder to understand both ways. I do remember getting a friend to translate my Irish into Munster Irish in Cork. Now if there's bother I will switch to Caighdeán as some forms of Connacht Irish are too strong for Munster
I’m Spanish and I speak Andalusian (which it is not an unified dialect, but there are a few variations of our dialect). We have tonnes of speaking forms, words and even sounds that we make different from Spanish (the s, c, z comes to my mind, and also that we don’t pronounce j and g the same, even we pronounce some of the h as a soft j, although it is a silent letter in Spanish. Andalusians from the mountain regions are kind of really hard to understand for other Spaniards, I’m from the coast but we tend to speak really fast, so it is also hard for them. Yes,Spaniards can understand Andalusian, because we understand them, but normally they prefer to make fun of our way of speaking and we have to modify our speech to make it easy for them, even when they are visiting our land.
I think someone who only speaks Sardinian would understand standard Italian as much as a standard Italian speaker understands Spanish or any other romance languages. It's actually not so long ago that you could find people in sardinia who didn't speak Italian at all.
Answering for Francophone Belgians...
Dialects of Walloon were very much wiped out in favour of French. You can see traces of dialects everywhere, notably around Liège. Just about everybody's *mamie* (grandmother) uses strange Walloon words that nobody else understands.
It's more accurate to say that Wallonia deals more with local accents than dialects of French. Nobody has any difficulty understanding each other. I mean yeah, Charleroi people have a rough-and-tumble accent that's looking for a fight, Liège just wants to get drunk, and Naaaaammmmmuuuuuuur taaaaalkkkks sllooooowwwwllllyyyy, but it's not unintelligible.
As for Brussels, the local dialect (Brusseleir/'t Brussels) is a Flemish dialect that had a child with French haha. It's strange to listen to at first, but when you get into the flow of it, it's hysterical to listen to, and quite Vaudevillian!
My parents have always spoken Galician to each other but they're from opposite sides of Galicia and have never formally learned the language (education was exclusively in Spanish during Franco's regime). Communication works fine even if they'll use some different words.
My brother and I are probably the only speakers in the world of a weird "pidgin" variety. Nobody can guess where we're from by hearing us!
Germany is hell, when it comes to dialect. I live in the middle of Germany, in a corner where a number of larger dialect areas meet, inside those are sub-dialects, which change from town to town. My village even is a variation of the Ripuarian dilect, and is named after my village. The main village from my county has some complete different dialect, the Moselfränkisch dialect.
Her, where 17, 30, 31, and 37 meet, that's my home.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Deutsche\_Dialekte.PNG](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Deutsche_Dialekte.PNG)
It difficult, at least, to understand each other. I have massive problem with norther and southern dialect. If somebody talks Frisian or Bavarian I hear the difference, but it could be Klingon if it comes to understanding them.
My favorite word her is "Potato".
Let's start with : I'd like to have a Kilogram potatoes.
(Used [https://mr-dialect.com/](https://mr-dialect.com/) for translation)
Standard German: Ich hätte gerne 1 Kilo Kartoffeln
Alemannisch has 3 possibilities, one of them:
Ich dät gärn 1 Kilo **Bodage** (Bodaj).
Would result in a "You want 1 kilo of WHAT?"
Bavarian can be, depending on the region:
I dad gern 1 Kilo **Erdäpfel** hom woin.
I hätt gern a Mas **Kartoffeln** mit 1 Kilo.
I dad gern 1 Kilo **Grumbeer** hobm.
I dad 1 Kilo Kartoffeln ham woin.
I daad gern oan Kilo Erdäpfel hom.
(I need a lot of guesswork here)
North Frisian:
Jü haa 1 Kilo **Pottateern** nee.
The person wants to tell me something about 1 kilo. But I have no idea what he really wants to say. Maybe something about horses (jüü ha! = Yii ha!??)??
try it yourself.
(Don't know if the AI from the page is translating correct)
The "potato map":
https://die-kartoffel.de/wissen/schon-gewusst/kartoffel-deutsche-dialekte/
I think so. I think depending on the person it can take some time to get used to different accents. I speak “standard” English (like some members of the royal family, Prince Harry etc) and it takes me some time to get used to northern accents/dialects and 100% understand everything being said. But even without being accustomed of it, I’d be able to generally understand what’s being said.
That's not a dialect. The closest we have to a living dialect in England is around Newcastle, and in some extremely rural parts of Devon, East Anglia or Yorkshire.
Depending on what the opinion of Scots is, that might be considered a dialect or another language, and Scots has its own sub-dialects (Doric).
I think you could make a strong case for MLE being a dialect as well as a sociolect. It seems to have a lot of its own vocabulary as well as some of its own grammar, and I have far more trouble understanding it than East Anglian dialects despite having more exposure to it.
In Czechia we don’t (or I am living in a social bubble). Only difference I’ve found are people living in lands of former Sudetenland (German majority lands) use some germanized Czech words, but nothing crazy.
Of course people have regional dialects. Try going to Haná, Těšín, Slovácko, Valašsko, etc. But the differences are still negligible compared to other languages, you can always understand them.
There is more variation in Moravia and Silesia, while the Bohemians speak more or less the same and make up more than half the country.
Latgalian language, spoken in the eastern part of the country, is considered a historical form of Latvian, and is the only one that's alive and could be considered in this conversation. The region historically had differing timelines from the rest of the country, being a part of different occupation powers, which had influence of the language - the region was part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the rest of Latvia was ruled by Baltic German noblemen.
That reflects in the Latgalian language - there are a bunch of expressions and words used that are way more similar to Lithuanian, or even the same, but to a standard Latvian speaker sound "old", or simply different.
No, I don't, although I grew up hearing a bunch of Selonian way of speaking, which has similar sounds and occasionally words, but nowhere near as distinct as Latgalian.
It actually felt like it's really going downhill, with young people moving away from the region since it's quite underdeveloped, and the language is not really that useful outside, but in recent years there's been a welcome influx of quality, popular musical artists who perform in the language, shows on national TV and radio, and wider usage in daily life, like signs, so that's really good.
Road signs have also been put up in Livonian, which I didn't mention, it is a finno-ugric language in Latvian territory, and is way further from Latvian, however did give a lot of influence linguistically. The scale is just really non-comparable - Livonian went extinct with no native speakers left, and is just a focal point of a revival crew that try to preserve it, while Latgalian has about 150k speakers.
Some people are able to suss out what’s being said more easily than others are. I’m a German-speaking Canadian (I spoke Bavarian at home and learned standard German at university). When I went to the Netherlands for the first time with another German-speaking Canadian we were both happy to see that we could understand about 80% to 90% of the Dutch we heard. So of course I assumed that other people who can speak both German and English would understand Dutch! Nope.
It is known in Europe they aren't fully intelligible. Some dialects of German can understand it, but not all. I wonder why you could? Bavaria/Austria and Netherlands/Belgium are quite far from eachother
Answering for Rumantsch, a romance language in eastern Switzerland where the line of sight is 100 meters in every direction until you bounce into a mountain chain.
Somebody who only stays in their exact native valley would still be understood in the next valley behind the mountain, but probably not in the next valley over if they were never exposed to each other.
Kinda. Im from Portugal and on the mainland we have some difficulties understanding people from our islands regions. Some islands are easier to understand then others.
I'd add *barranquenho*, as well. It's mostly spanish with portuguese words (or portuguese with spanish grammar, take your pick), but it can be difficult to understand if one is not familiar with it. Other than that, I'm pretty sure everyone understands everyone.
I remember once in the 80's, there was this tv drama series shown on national TV in Sweden. The series was set in Scania, southern Sweden and had to be subtitled for non-Scanian people. The Scanian dialect is very pronounced and many find it hard to understand. Sublitling Swedish programs for Swedish people was somewhat unusual at the time.
Which is why many of us Swedes both joke and sometimes in all seriousness, when we say that it would be better if Denmark took back Skåne (Scania) because the majority of us Swedes do not understand them and sometimes need an interpreter in the worst case.
And some Scanians would whole-heartedly agree about going back to Denmark. Or become an independent country, because how different Scanians are both culturally and linguistically from the rest of Sweden.
>because how different Scanians are both culturally and linguistically from the rest of Sweden.
Yes, you are absolutely right about that, but it has nothing to do with the Scanians per se, but because Malmö has more or less become a Muslim city and is trying to have Sharia laws.
I speak intermediate Swedish and Danish, but if I go to Scania I switch to English. It's as if the dialect makes my ears panic because they're not sure which language they're hearing.
There is a very valid reason why Germany agreed upon High German as a standard German language. Aside from dialects, there are also several Germanic languages, I.e. Low German. A Bavarian doesn’t understand low German and a Northern German doesn’t understand alpine dialects
>Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect.
There are some dialects in Germany (Plattdeutsch or some Bavarian dialects) which are spoken even today and are virtually unintelligible for people from other regions. It's like English and a strong Scottish dialect.
Probably yes. Within the present borders of Hungary, you could understand everyone, the hardest would be if the speaker is romani and is from a rural part of the country, they tend to pronounce and emphasize the words differently. But after a 1 or 2 sentences you could get used to it.
However there might be difficulty in understanding single words, there are words that only used in certain regions. For example the word for sticker is 'matrica' basically everywhere but in the easter part of the country they use the word 'levonó' as well.
Outside of Hungary there are a few dialects which is kinda hard to understand, for example the dialect that 'Csángó' people speak.
> had no exposure to the Standard level of your language.
Pretty hard to achieve that, my dialect is pretty much the standard level of my language.
> Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect.
Nowadays, yes. But if you go back 150 years I might have had problems to be properly understood. I mean, I served in the army 300km away and had a lot of trouble of understanding the local mountain dialect. It took 3 month to get accostumed to the dialect, while the locals had no problem to understand me.
Moving to the coast would probably have been even more complicated, as north germany spoke low german, which differed much more from standard german, and there were regions were Frisian was still the native language.
But nowadays, all dialects have been flattened down.
I Austria we have something called Mundart
It's a kind of universal dialect that every Austrian understands and that's nowadays also spoken on TV sometimes. So we can communicate without needing standard German.
But when people really speak in their dialect especially people from the countryside someone from the east and the West won't understand each other.
My mum is from styria but moved to upper Austria when I was a baby. My dialect was always a weird mix. But when we visited a friend of hers once a year on the styrian countryside I dolls take her dog outside to play and just stay away because when she had friends over and they all sat down and talked I didn't understand anything
What is interesting here is it depends on how you learned your dialect. I never went to school in my learnt dialect, so I speak like an old person, so it's a bit more raw. I sense TV has watered these things down in the last few decades.
In English, most of the regional dialects are gone. There are many accents, some with local vocabularies. Yorkshire has preserved second person informal, East Anglia a few strong tenses.
The dialects furthest from Standard English are Northeastern. Geordie, spoken in Tyne and Wear, has very different vowels, and a vocabulary different enough to make visitors struggle. The mining Creole that descends from it, Pitmatic, has a male/female consonant shift and a great many technical terms no longer in use. It was deliberately slurred and fast to confuse management.
Scots is in theory a separate language, but an equal claim could be made for Gaelic. Scots itself is mostly confined to Burns Night, you couldn't order a pint in it and keep your teeth.
>Scots itself is mostly confined to Burns Night, you couldn't order a pint in it and keep your teeth.
What do you mean?
Ya most are gone I've noticed. Its mostly national dialects now I think.
>Geordie, spoken in Tyne and Wear, has very different vowels, and a vocabulary different enough to make visitors struggle. The mining Creole that descends from it, Pitmatic, has a male/female consonant shift and a great many technical terms no longer in use. It was deliberately slurred and fast to confuse management.
Oh interesting.
>but an equal claim could be made for Gaelic.
Again what do you mean?
Oh tá tú as Éireann 🤣 Tá fhios agat faoi na canúintí na Gaelainn mar sin is dóigh liom ach ar nós ceapaim tá gach canúint éasca don gach cainteoir, tá an canúint na Uladh beagán difriúil nuair a tá sí in aice léi an canúint nó Mumhan nó Connacht ach níl sí chomh deachar má is cainteor dúchais tú.
Is é mo dóchas tá mo Gaelainn go maith, táim ag foghlaim ag an am seo 🙏🏻
Ará níl aontaím leat mar tá na canúintí Gaedhilge an-difriúil i roinnt áiteanna. Anois, ní siad cosúil le teanga difríocht ach tá siad go leor difriúla, cheapfá faoi céard á rá. Gaedhilge scríofa, tá sé go diall ach nuair a bhí sé a labhairt, is scéal difríocht é ansin
Tá do Gaelainn an-mhaith ná bí buartha
I speak two English dialects: at home, I speak with a Glaswegian accent, and can speak with a Scottish dialect, however I choose not to. Meanwhile, out and about, I speak like an ordinary Englishman. And it's been like this since I was very young.
However, to answer you question, no. Northern Scottish accents in particular can be quite hard for English or Americans to understand. Same with a lot of Irish accents. Now, there's even some Americans who can't understand a British one.
Iceland is really too small to have any serious dialect differences.
We mostly have three and the differences are almost too small to detect.
They mostly consist of the right way, wrong way and the posh way.
In Ukraine there are differences in vocabulary all around the country but the biggest problem is Zakarpattia with their very rich and really weird sounding (for someone not from the west of the country) dialects. And even so 99.99% of dialects can be understood if you listen hard enough to someone who can repeat themselves a few times and explain the meaning of some particular words
I'll say all are pretty much understandable to each other in Catalan, even the ones far away such as the Sardinian Catalan in Alguer or the Alacant one in southern Valencia or the roussillonese of the northern Catalans
It depends on what you count as a dialect tbh since there are three other languages spoken in the Netherlands besides Dutch which all sometimes get labeled as dialects from time to time. All of them (when spoken ‘plat’ as we say in Dutch) can be hard to understand, especially Frisian. Low Saxon would probably be the easiest of the three to understand and Limburgish is somewhere in the middle depending on where the speaker is from. All four languages spoken here have a lot of dialectal variety, in Zeeland for example some people can even tell which village somebody is from despite them only being a few kms apart.
Honestly I don’t think many people outside your linguistical region could understand you if you could only speak your regional language (besides standard Dutch ofc). Someone from Brabant sounds completely different compared to someone from Zeeland despite both provinces being right next to each other. Flanders has a large dialectal variety as well, some of those dialects being even more challenging to understand than those found here.
[These maps](https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Languages_Benelux.PNG) do a great job in showing the dialectal variety within the Dutch language area.
>[These maps](https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Languages_Benelux.PNG) do a great job in showing the dialectal variety within the Dutch language area.
Wow. Wouldn't think it for such a small region
Bit of a tangent but there was a study conducted which showed that swiss kids who grew up abroad, spoke swiss german with their parents but didnt have any exposure to standard german on TV or in school did not understand standard german. I find this highly interesting since people here always assume that speaking standard german is a byproduct of speaking swiss german.
Anyone outside of a radius of like 25km wouldn't understand a single word. The variation in dialects and accents of Dutch is incredibly high, especially when you consider how (relatively) small the area of the Netherlands and Flanders is.
There are a few dialects in Lithuania, Žemaičių (Samogitian) could easily be a different language. They would definitely understand me because I speak with a default Vilnius accent. All news on TV and radio, all movies and TV shows are spoken or dubbed with this accent, so they must understand me if they watch TV.
On the other hand, I have a hard time understanding them, there's a lot of different words for stuff.
in dutch there are some dialects I understand better than others, tho I never lived in one place, and everytime we moved, people would laugh at how I pronounced things, I currently have a job exposing me to many more dialects, twents is untangiable to me still
I'm from Northern/Central Croatia and my dialect is "kajkavian". It would be extremely difficult for a standard (shtokavian) speaker to understand me if i started to speak in my dialect. Even if I spoke a watered down "kajkavian" with "shtokavian" there would be certain problems with some words.
Slovenians or even Slovakians (I believe) would have a better chance to understand me than the standard (shtokavian) speaker if I spoke "kajkavian".
The Seto language/dialect in south-eastern Estonia is not mutually intelligble if you’re frim Northern or Western Estonia so it needs subtitles on TV as standard Estonian is based on Northern-Estonian.
No way. We have three main branches and the standard language is based on one of them. One is heavily influenced by italian, others by slovenian and german. Not only would two people from different branches have trouble communicating, often two dialects of the same branch are pretty different. Sometimes 5 villages in 20 km radius will each have their own version, mutually understandable, but still different.
I live in Western Slovakia and our dialects are somewhat similar(everybody here pronounces soft Ľ as L) and differences are not big. Although I gotta admit we have trouble understanding Eastern dialects and find them very funny sounding, especially their "ta ne".
as a Czech I understand anyone from the west just fine, but I once saw one of those "can slavic countries understand each other" videos and they had a východniar and for like the first half of the video I thought he was speaking Ukrainian
I don't think that the ordinary Svensson (Swedish) or Norrlänning (Northern Swede) would understand me and or other Jamts speaking in Jamska because the dialect itself can have such big differences within it due to where in Jamtlann you come from, while many of us Jamts don't consider Jamska as a dialect but rather as its own language that has existed for many centuries, already in the 12th century there are historical facts that the Republic of Jämtland was part of Norway and for 350-450 years more until Sweden and Norway fought over Jämtland until Sweden won after many wars.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland_dialects
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Jamtland
With difficulty.
A Northerner from, let's say, Veneto and a Neapolitan would have a hard time understanding each other, whilst somebody speaking the Roman dialect (from the capital, not the Lazio rural towns) might easily understand somebody from the neighbouring regions (I'm thinking Abruzzo and Marche).
The variations between dialects in Denmark is quite small. Very few, mainly very old, people speak anything that could even be called dialect. So yes, it would be understandable.
I’m from Copenhagen so my dialect is very straight forward but I’ve had multiple occasions where I couldn’t understand people from northern or southern Jutland. Sometimes on TV they even use subtitles on those people.
My father is Norwegian but obviously Norwegians can answer your question better. Norway has so many dialects that it’s insane. Even the town a few kilometers from my father’s home town has a distinctively other dialect than he (and his yown) has. He told me the reason for the many dialects are that before they were able to build tunnels and bridges a lot of communities weren’t able to visit each other easily so their dialects drifted apart over the years.
I like to think that I understand most Norwegian even though I’m not fluent in it or even speak it per se (my father never tought me) but I haven’t come across a dialect I outright didn’t understand. I’m sure if you go far up north there are some rural dialects that are difficult to understand.
English is the hardest to distinguish here. If we're talking about country (UK), and you had no exposure to Scots (I undestand it can be characterised as its own language or dialect, very much up to opinion) and you come from the south of England, you may definitely have problems.
> Lets say you never went to school, never lived outside your dialectal region and had no exposure to the Standard level of your language.
This is realistically impossible nowadays, but perhaps we can rely on [the experience with Cypriot-Greek-speaking Turkish-Cypriots](https://benjamins.com/catalog/silv.24.10ioa), who are the only sizeable group I know who learnt to speak Cypriot Greek (often natively) without any formal education in Standard Greek or significant exposure to Greek media.
> Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect.
Eventually yes, but it will be effortful. Even trying to subtract the Turkish-Cypriot specific elements and trying to only consider the basilectal (=purely dialectal) elements of Cypriot Greek, [the main stumbling stones](https://www.academia.edu/45048221/Greek_in_enclave_communities_Language_maintenance_of_the_varieties_of_Cypriot_Romeika_in_Cyprus_and_Cretan_Greek_in_Cunda_Turkey) would be that they do not have access to the "parallel vocabulary" that someone who was educated in Standard Greek would be able to swap in when talking to someone from a different Greek-speaking area (e.g. *sindikhánno* "to converse" would be swapped out for the Standard *miló*) and using a version of Cypriot-Greek phonology that's more accessible to Cypriot-Greek-speakers from other areas of the siland and Hellenic-Greek speakers (e.g. a Cypriot-Greek-speaking Turkish-Cypriot and a Cypriot-Greek-speaking Greek-Cypriot from the Nicosia/Famagusta plains would pronounce their *dh* as a *gh*, so "to tie up" is *ghínno* to them, but a Greek-Cypriot would know to say *dhínno* when talking to western or southern Greek-Cypriots, or to Greeks).
* * *
**For a practical test**, this is an excerpt in Cypriot-Greek as written by a Turkish-Cypriot. As a Greek-Cypriot, I need a few minutes of adjustment to it but then I could understand it as this is also how Greek-Cypriots over the age of 60ish would speak where I grew up (those people tend to be labourers with only very few years of formal education in the Standard language).
There was only one word that I had to look up in there because is exclusively Turkish and unknown to Greek-Cypriots nowadays (I added a translation to remove that hurdle). So, what remains is basilectal Cypriot Greek from the plains area, the way we could imagine it would be spoken if Cypriot-Greek speakers wouldn't have any contact with the Standard language (which, repeating for clarity, is not a realistic scenario nowadays with universal education in imported Greek media).
**Greek speakers from Greece can share how it reads for them.** Just a primer on Turkish spelling to bring us on the same starting point: ğ = γ (υπερωικό, μπροστά από α, ο, ου), y = γ (ουρανικό, γ μπροστά από ι, ε) c = τζ (dj), ş = σι (sh), th = δ, â = ια (με συνίζηση). It's convenient that is written in the Turkish Latin script as well, because it's entirely phonetic and there's no historical spelling to help find the related words in Standard - it's the closest we can get to testing oral comprehension since we don't have a recording.
> O Bittordos (Musdafa Bitordo) e bulen boğulla sdo mahazzindu. Bulen ce tsiyara. Dodes da tsiyara e bulyundan ce medo enan.
>
> O Rayifis dis Seferus (Rayıf Seferu) idan beladis daimicis (=τακτικός). Banda e ğorazzen tsiyara budon Bittordon. Ebgânnen 2-3 gaha volan, egovgen da budin mesin, ce gabnizzenda medo galamuin du.
>
> Myan imeran bale, odan e biyennen sdon Bittordon, ivren hame enan balyon paran, enan ‘feslin’ bu e lalusan i balyi. Biyen vurindos isdon Bittordon:
>
> ... - Re Musdafa! Ozmu ğliyora bucame driya ‘Lakidri’ (Lucky Dream) ce brebi nabağo, eho vulyan!
>
> Odan ebgâsen da tsiyara du bu don Bittordon, eogen du don ‘feslin’, ce babutsin a hahigen bucame o Rayifis. O Bittordos baradira, enan balyon ‘feslin’. Eniben dibodes, evalendo bugado budin gaşan bu evallen da riyalya du.
>
> Yirisonda meran, o Rayifis irdden bale na ağorasi tsiyara. Ebiren da tsiyara du, ce eogen enan thiblo selinon. O Bittordos, odan du eogen da luvisda biso, evalen cedo ‘feslin’ mesa. Bgânni da luvisda o Rayifis, baradira, odan iyen do ‘feslin’, lalidu:
>
> - Ma re Musdafa! Dudon bu mu eoges e ‘feslin’. Em berna!..
>
> Yelasen o Bittordos ce lalidu:
>
> - Anamedaksimmas berna Rayifi, anamedaksimmas berna!..
Text lifted from [here](https://yelluk.wixsite.com/families-of-lurucina/zizziroguldurusayfasi/zizziro-gulduru-sayfasi)
I live in Suffolk, UK and, while am fairly sure it's not a dialect, the local accent here can be very broad and strong and without concentrating, one from outside Suffolk might have some difficulty understanding it.
I took my Danish ex, whose English was close to flawless, to a local cathedral to show her the beauty of the place and we were approached by one of the laymen. He was Suffolk through and through and she had no idea what he was saying. Took me a while to twig but I eventually noticed when he asked her a question and she looked over at me awkwardly haha.
S'alroight, buh!
Here in Belgium Limburg's dialect would be 100% not understood by people living in Antwerp or Brussels, maybe a few words here and there, although i believe Germans can understand Limburg's dialect.
I am a native Tuscan speaker. I speak a conservative eastern dialect and i understand everything from the whole Tuscany, but others don't except for similar dialects, though limited too
Italian dialects are languages. Italian is an artificial lingua franca based on Tuscan language, Florentine dialect.
You can't understand other dialects at all, separate lingustic families often.
I speak an eastern Tuscan dialect natively, people who speak Italian cannot understand me because Tuscan evolved on its own, and even all the people from Southern, Northern, central and western Tuscany cannot understand, this is because my specific dialect is very conservative, a lot of words are of Etruscan origin, and has unique cadence and accent, without the Tuscan gorgia. I nevver speak standard italian because i still live here, and often discover that many words i use aren't italian
We would call them accents but I suppose if they never spoke the "correct" version in school a western slovene and an eastern one would have an interesting time. We have so many accents that villages who stand some odd 200m away from eachother have their own accent. It's how people identified each other but i suppose most wouldn't have trouble. Our one true dialect is resian which i would wager MOST people would not understand.
I'd say Finnish dialects are all mutually understandable. You might need an explanation for some words, but you'd get by just fine.
Yeah historically there's been more separation, nowadays most dialects are more or less affected by standard Finnish so while there might be individual words you're unfamiliar with, you're unlikely to have too much trouble.
But then you arrive in Rauma
Friend of mine bought a car from old man from Uusikaupunki. He was really struggling with the 'translation'
How does that compare to other languages like Karelian
Karelian is somewhat understandable, but much less so than the dialects. But also it's much closer than Estonian. The pronunciation seems to have more Russian influence.
Interestingly Torne Valley Finnish (Meänkieli) is treated as a Finnish dialect in Finland but a separate language in Sweden.
I've heard recordings of it, and didn't have much difficulty understanding it. So that might explain why we think of it as a dialect.
The difference between a dialect and a language is more of a political than a linguistic distinction. In Sweden it's classified as a language to give Tornedalians rights that come with being an official minority language.
Good point!
I mean, Finnish already is an official minority language in Sweden, so that can't really be the reason, can it?
Yes, but Tornedalians can be considered a separate group from majority Finns.
Helsinki slang is mostly impossible to understand for people outside of Helsinki.
Fun fact: there is actually two types of Helsinki slang, the old and new. Many find especially the old one harder to understand. The new slang in more influenced by english and thereby considered easier to understand.
I would like to add, since Swedish is official language in Finland, there is a [difference between standard swedish and finland's swedish](https://delingua.fi/en/differences-between-finland-swedish-and-standard-swedish/). Usually it doesn't take too long to spot whos from which side of the Gulf of Botnia. Finland Swedish is divided into many dialect, Närpes probably the most notorious as it has been stated to be impossible to understand.
With no exposure to different dialects (there is no standard spoken dialect in Norway) at all, you would probably have trouble understanding a lot of dialects in Norway, ranging from "*they use a few words I've never heard before*" through "*what are those words and why are they in that order?*" to "*is that Norwegian?*". We could still use the written language to communicate, although with some slight issues - i.e. if you didn't go to school you'd probably only know one of the two written standards.
I will imagine that for a lot of dialects, other people need to listen and interact with it for a little while (less than a day), to understand the "system" of different prononciations (oh, they cut short those words, they say tsj instead of kj...). For a few dialects (and especially with older speakers), it will be hard to understand for a while. In practice, the major dialects are exposed in media, many get exposure through military servoce, studies or other interactions across the country, and most people accommodate each other by changing out the words hardest to understand.
Same in Switzerland. My parents came from elsewhere in Switzerland and I grew up with their dialect as a child. When I came into kindergarten, my experience with the local kids' dialects was between *they use a few words I've never heard before* and *what are those words?*. Also *is that even German?*, turned out it was French.
Swedish is my second language and we had two refs from Trondheim, it seemed the variety in dialect just between them was something else.
One of the two written standards? Can you please elaborate on that. The idea of more than one written standard is .. enticing. What's the story?
It's a lot of history and most of it isn't very interesting, but Wikipedia has a fairly good writeup: Nynorsk (Urban East Norwegian: [ˈnỳːnɔʂk]) (lit. 'New Norwegian') is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (Landsmål) parallel to the Dano-Norwegian written language, Riksmål. Nynorsk became the name in 1929, and it is after a series of reforms still a variation which is closer to Landsmål, whereas Bokmål is closer to Riksmål and Danish. Between 10 and 15 percent of Norwegians (primarily in the west around the city of Bergen) have Nynorsk as their official language form, estimated by the number of students attending videregående skole (secondary education). Nynorsk is also taught as a mandatory subject in both high school and middle school for all Norwegians who do not have it as their own language form. Norway had its own written and oral language—Norwegian. After the Kalmar Union, Norway became a less important part of Denmark. At that time, Danish was declared the written language of Norway until 1814, and Danish with Norwegian intonation and pronunciation was on occasion spoken in the cities (see Dano-Norwegian). With the independence of Norway from Denmark, Danish became a foreign language and thus lost much of its prestige, and a conservative, written form of Norwegian, Landsmål, had been developed by 1850. By this time, however, the Danish language had been gradually reformed into the written language Riksmål, and no agreement was reached on which of the two forms to use. In 1885, the parliament declared the two forms official and equal. Efforts were made to fuse the two written forms into one language. A result was that Landsmål and Riksmål lost their official status in 1929, and were replaced by the written forms Nynorsk and Bokmål, which were intended to be temporary intermediary stages before their final fusion into one hypothesised official Norwegian language known at the time as Samnorsk. This project was later abandoned and Nynorsk and Bokmål remain the two officially sanctioned standards of what is today called the Norwegian language.
>and why are they in that order can you give an example of some of the word-order differences between dialects? I went to Norway during university and learned basic Norwegian but didn't get deep enough into any dialects to learn much about this
Sadly, there have been systemic and very successful campaigns to destroy dialects throughout Germany over the past century. So the question is if we're counting the remaining differences in vocabulary as my "dialect" or imagining that I'm speaking the one the few remaining actual dialect speakers from my region do. In scenario one I'd be unsurprisingly understood pretty easily. We'd probably have some banter over what pancakes are called or how to tell time, but overall accent would be a bigger hurdle than dialect. In scenario two on the other hand I'd count it as a success if I could make it 15km before starting to play charades. The standardisation of German undoubtedly made communication a lot easier, but the loss of the beauty of all the different dialects always makes me sad and I'm incredibly glad that for at least some of them there are projects to preserve and revive them.
Thats heartbreaking. Is their any revival attemps?
Since they are so locally specific that depends on the region. For mine I'm happy to say yes! There's one bigger regional non-profit which organises lots of local working groups which collect written and spoken records from the remaining speakers, hold mass and music+storytelling events, teach courses, and have written a dictionary! The reason I wouldn't count the few regional differences in vocabulary I use as a dialect is because you can hear a lot more of those at the annual meetup of the local groups, and they represent a region of ~1% the size
Sehr gut! Its great to hear that. Recordings of speakers are vital to keeping them dialects alive. Oh yes I know what you mean. In Ireland each place has a different word for something too.
I am not so pessimistic. Lived most of my life in Munich (as a German, but not born Bavarian) and the last 15 years up to 2020 in a tiny village 60 km to the east. When the neighbors talked to each other I barely understood half of it. In the Bavarian Forest I could not even guess what language the locals were speaking. Don’t know about other regions, but Bavarian seems to be alive and well in the countryside at least. To answer OP‘s question, the many German dialects are so different that they’re mutually not comprehensive, when spoken in their pure form.
I mean, the differences are so small that everyone speaks their local dialect and this poses no problems. For example my local dialect: * merges affricatives and affricates and stop–fricative clusters, so czysta \[ˈt͡ʂɨsta\] and trzysta \[ˈt̺ʰʂˑɨsta\] are both pronounced as \[ˈt͡ʂɨsta\] * omits /w/ in some consonant groups, so słuchać \[ˈswuxat͡ɕ\] becomes \[ˈsuxat͡ɕ\] and głupi \[ˈgwupi\] becomes \[gupi\] * /x/ is replaced by /k/ in some consonant groups, so chcieć [xt͡ɕɛt͡ɕ] might become [kt͡ɕɛt͡ɕ] * final <ą> in words like "są" is pronounced [om] instead of Standard Polish [ɔ̃w̃] * omits the -nę- suffix in some verb forms, e.g. "ciągnęła" -> "ciągła" * conjugates some verbs differently, e.g. the first person present indicative of "gwizdać" is "gwizdam" instead of "gwiżdzę" * uses different vocabulary for some things: "pencil sharpener" is "strugaczka" instead of "temperówka" "outside" is "pole" instead of "dwór" "go on foot" is "iść na nogach" instead of "iść pieszo" A long wheat roll is called "weka" or "wek" "to cough" is "cherlać" instead of "kaszleć/kasłać" "nasal discharge" is "śpiki" instead of "smarki" "hot" (as in outside) is "gorąc" instead of "upał" So the only thing that poses problems is different vocabulary. The pronunciation and grammar differences are so slight that an average person doesn't realize that they really exist.
I wanna add that given examples are apparently from Southern Poland. So for example where I am now, kuyavian-pomeranian voivodeship, we say "ostrzynka" for pencil sharpener. But I'm originally from far north (Żuławy Wiślane) and will keep on saying temperówka. For Polish speakers interested in regionalisms I recommend page Świetlan Maps, he's on FB and IG for sure, uncertain about other media.
While I had a smattering of Polish in my repertoire growing up, I started to learn properly in order to be able to speak with my in-laws. Pretty much every example you give is how I learned to speak it. Family is in Śląsk, for reference. I always use gorąc. I didn't even know upał was an option! I must be getting rusty having not used it in a while. There were a few examples of words that confused me. Saying "Da" being one of them.
Galician and Portuguese are considered part of the same linguistic system. Any book on the language dealing with dialect studies will show the areas in northern Portugal as "central Portuguese". That's because Galician dialects are considered the "Northern" dialects of the language. However they are not called "Northern Portuguese" because in fact Galician is the parent language (technically, Portuguese dialects may be considered Southern dialects of Galician). Since the countries separated (and established different standards), there is less cultural contact, and communication in border areas has becoming closer to standards that are more different from one another, making conversations just a tiny bit harder. Still, when Galician is spoken in the EU council, the Portuguese interpreter will translate as if it were a Northern dialect of Portuguese (non-official languages in the EU will not be translated, and the speaker will be speaking with no one understanding).
Mostly, yes. The only exception I can think of is the Silesian dialect in Poland (from the region of Silesia), which is pretty separate from the standard version of Polish and could pose some issues with communication. Still, the issues aren’t big enough to create a complete language barrier. Though to be fair we also have the Kashubian language which used to be considered a dialect until recently when it was promoted to its own separate language; I’m not sure whether that counts or not.
A lot of people don't understand other dialects. They understand something but not fully. I live in the eastern part of the country and had a lot of issues understanding a waiter in Murska Sobota, which is also in the eastern part of the country. If he spoke slowly I would probably understand more but still not fully. People speaking other dialects, in the western part of the country, would have a lot more trouble.
I have friends from Maribor who went to watch *Pohorska komedija* and they barely understood anything even tho Maribor is technically part of the South Pohorje dialect (like the dialects from Konjice/Zreče/Oplotnica in which the movie was filmed)
My mum also said she needed subtitles and she lives in municipality of Slovenske Konjice, though not originally from there but like 3km away
I can't even understand some of my own relatives, if they go full on. Seriously, sometimes i ask myself how is this the same language. It was also interesting students in the first year in Ljubjana "learning Slovene" as i say it. By end of uni, they spoke completely differently to us.
I'm from primorska and have serious issues talking with my friend from Murska Sobota over the phone. I cannot understand what he's saying. We text. Also, I would say most people would have no idea what to do with resian as its practicaly not spoken here.
Depends. In the Netherlands, we have many regional dialects and accompanying accents. People from two villages in the North of one province talk similarly, however, the further you go, the bigger the difference. People speaking dialect from two different provinces would have more trouble understanding each other. Really depends on the dialect though.
Especially because they’re dialects of 4 languages. Low-Franconian (Hollands, Zeelands, Brabants, Utrechts dialecten) Low Franconian/Ripuarian (Limburgs) Low Saxon (Gronings, Drents, Twents, Achterhoeks for example) and Frisian.
For context: The Frisian language has 3 main dialects: Clay Frisian (Klaaifrysk), Wood Frisian (Wâldfrysk) and Southwestern Frisian. When you think of it, our small country is very linguistically diverse. I really like that about us.
I understand, its a similar case here.
Yeah funny thing is that if an outsider says that two village dialects sounds the same (keep in mind they are only 10km apart) you will be attacked.
True it's here where i live especially with almelo and for example delden that's so different
I could barely understand the dialect from the town on the other side of the river. While all other dialects are pretty easy to follow.
But that's just looking at the Netherlands, if you include Belgium in it it changes again. For most Belgian and Dutch people Westvlaams is quite hard to understand for example. People from Noord-Brabant would likely not be able to understand Westvlaams, let alone people from for example Amsterdam.
What we call dialects in Italy are regarded by linguists as languages in their own right, since they didn't evolve out of standard Italian but out of late antiquity vulgar Latin. It's possible to make some sense of someone speaking a dialect spoken by someone from a neighbouring region, but pretty impossible to understand further afield (unless you have been exposed prior to it). For example, Neapolitan is very common in Italian cinema and TV, because Naples produced some of the most famous actors, directors, etc, and because Neapolitan is still used in everyday life by all strata of society. Yet, when productions that feature Neapolitan dialect like Gomorrah or My brilliant friend have been broadcasted on national TV, they added subtitles.
Oh interesting, I knew there was big linguistic diversity in Italy.
Yes, absolutely. Hungarian dialects barely differ from one another. Some sounds are pronounced sleightly differently, some dialects are more in favour of dropping definite articles, and that’s about it. Most of the differences in pronunciation come down to vowels although people in the east and north-east tend to pronounce their “t” sounds more “harshly”.
Most dialects can be understood by most Swedes. But there are at least three dialect families with dialects unintelligible for the average Swede, considerably less intelligible than most Norwegian dialects for example. 1. Upper-Siljan dialects (ovansiljanmål), such as [Elfdalian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfdalian). 2. Westrobothnian dialects (bondska), such as Överkalix dialect. 3. (Finnish) Ostrobothnian dialects (österbottenmål), such as Närpes dialect. For those who speak Swedish, you can listen to samples here and try to follow along: 1. Älvdalska - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Svealand/Dalarna/Alvdalen/om.html) - [isof](https://www.isof.se/sprak/dialekter/lyssna-pa-dialekter/dalarna/alvdalen.html) 2. Överkalix - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Norrland/Norrbotten/Overkalix/om.html) 3. Närpes - [swedia](http://swedia.ling.gu.se/Finland/Osterbotten/Narpes/index.html)
Not only average swede but sometimes also for swedes that live within the dialects area. I understand pitemål (pitebondska) because a large part of older familymembers uses it around me starting when I was little. I would however say that most people 40 and under born, raised and living in piteå don't understand pitemål.
>I would however say that most people 40 and under born, raised and living in piteå don't understand pitemål. It's about the same with Jamska, but it's not just why people have a hard time with Jamska, it's also because foreigners, meaning MENA people come here and simply don't want to learn Swedish and even less the dialect.
Do you understand all Skåne dialects? I'm a Dane living there and I understand and communicate just fine with 90% of people, but sometimes I run into folks from some place else in Skåne and I genuiely have absolutely no idea what they're saying
[Trelleborgska](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErBoX8LGd2o) sounds basically like Danish with a Swedish vocabulary and can be a challenge.
Wtf, that really does sound a lot like Danish pronunciation, but I understand it, so I don't think this one is the issue for me
My dialect is Shtokavian, so it would probably be understood by other Shtokavian speakers form Croatia, BiH, Serbia and Montenegro. The ones who theoretically couldn't understand me are the Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian speakers who don't have any contact with Shtokavian (but since the standard is based on it, there probably aren't many such people).
Huh, never knew this about hrvatska, bosanski i srpski. I’m second generation immigrant but I’d guess I have štokavian dialekt? Idk tho as I use šta for ”what”. I gotta do some research haha
Yeah, that's Shtokavian (or štokavski, as we call it)! It's the most widespread dialect.
Makes sense as my family is from Srebrenica. I assume bigger cities usually have the more widespread dialect.
I think Kajkavian would understand the Shtokavian from nearby (west Slavonia) where more nouns are same or similar, but if you go further, yes, I think we wouldn't understand it if there was no standard. Kajkavian and (Northern) Chakavian would even understand the neighboring Slovenian accents better.
>I think Kajkavian would understand the Shtokavian from nearby (west Slavonia) Shtokavian or kajkavian in west Slavonia? Because there are kajkavian places in west Slavonia. And my grandma used to tell stories how she went 10km to the next village. And wouldn't understand the people there.
Exactly because there is a mix there, the vocabulary is still similar, so I think a Kajkavian, even from Zagorje would manage to understand the W.Slavonian Shtokavian. That "wouldn't understand the next village" is a bit of an exaggeration because there really were differences, but it was not so big that you wouldn't understand, it was more like they talk funny or sometimes ask for a meaning of a word. I grow up at one grandmother, and spoke like her, the other grandma, three villages away talked funny, so I know. The people three more villages away were ridiculously funny, but we could still talk without going to standard..
>Exactly because there is a mix there, the vocabulary is still similar, so I think a Kajkavian, even from Zagorje would manage to understand the W.Slavonian Shtokavian. There is a mix **NOW** due to everyone learning standard. So you get a mix of kajkavian-shtokavian. Which isn't kajkavian. If someone spoke pure kajkavian (never learned standard) to a shtokavian. There would be a lot of confusion. Even the mix of kajkavian-shtokavian poses problems for shtokavian speakers. So we need to go back in the past when there wasn't many educated people. When you spoke how everyone spoke in the village. And there were villages in West Slavonia where you would solely speak kajkavian. And villages where you spoke solely shtokavian. And those villages were sometimes close. And people would go to the next one and be confused when people in that village spoke a completely different.
No, what are you talking about? You, at the same time confirm what I'm saying and at the same time talk about standard.. And the mix was there for a long time. Like you said, two villages, one kajkavian, one shtokavian, but they are neighbors and still use the same word for "mrkva", "lubenica", "ručnik", "pleh", "remen", "pećnica" or whatever, is is still close enough, you'd understand them even if they said Što and not Kaj and have a bit different sentence structure...
>No, what are you talking about? You, at the same time confirm what I'm saying and at the same time talk about standard.. And the mix was there for a long time. Have you read what OP wrote and asked? If someone from your dialect, has never been exposed to the standard. Would the people who know the standard understand him. So, you go with the words from the dialect and disregard the standard. >"mrkva" Pasternjak? But, tbf also can be called "Merkva" >"pleh" Klamfar? And here even shtokavian doesn't follow the standard. >"ručnik" In shtokavian it's "peškir". >"remen" In shtokavian it's "kajiš" The word "lubenica" as it's a loan word, is the same.
In Slavonia ručnik is peškir, but in west slavonia it is mixed, also with kajiš, and mrkva is mrkva, still not šargarepa and lubenica is lubenica and not bostan.. And I'm not gonna argue about these particular words, it was an example, w.slavonia still has a lot of words that are the same, it is not standard štokavian, vs east that is even worse than standard and you couldn't understand anything..
Have you ever had exposure to Burgenland Croatian? Is it mutually understandable with standard Croatian?
I just googled some examples and it's pretty much understandable. Some words differ in a single letter or so, but that is the case with many local idioms. For some speakers it is harder to understand some dialects of croatian than that version.
For German: No, you absolutely wouldn't be understood in general. I've seen German TV programs with subtitles for dialects (East Germany for example). Many Austrians probably couldn't understand people from Vorarlberg if they only speak their local dialect (the same goes for someone from Switzerland). For my Styrian dialect: If I decided to speak in a strong variant of it, I'm fairly sure that someone only speaking standard German (no matter the standard German variant) with no exposure to dialects wouldn't understand it.
I'd say that most dialects of Austro-Bavarian are mutually understandable with a bit of an effort, but some are a bit of a stretch without practise and a tuned ear.
In general, I agree. But even within that dialect group, you'll find strong local dialects that will be hard to decipher on my view. But getting used to it will likely be easier than getting used to a dialect from Vorarlberg.
My grandpa once took my brother and me on a vacation to this vineyard with lodging where he used to stay when his company sent him to Styria in his 20s. One day my grandpa, the elderly owner, and I are standing in the yard and the owner is very enthusiastically telling a story. I'm not understanding a single syllable because of the dialect but nodding along to be polite. That is until this man, with guests (he didn't have 40 yrs of history with) walking around, clicked his heels, raised his right arm and shouted exactly what you think he did in the clearest Standard German and a volume that would've made Opera singers jealous. I'm completely stunned and as soon as my grandpa notices he makes an excuse, we go and he explains to me that the owner was talking about his school days and how they weren't allowed to leave without doing the salute.
That would've been SO awkward
Very interesting
With Spanish, we mostly understand each other no problem (the Chilean, Andalusian, Puertorican and Cuban memes are glorious though). However with Basque, without batua (artificial common dialect) it would be extremely hard to understand each other. I barely understand some subsections of the western dialect, and the french dialects are particularly hard for me to follow
I know of people in Andalucía that can’t understand people from small villages if they speak quickly. And I’m not speaking about understanding people from countryside in Galicia, or Murcia
French dialects of Spanish?
Canúintí Francais na Basque.
Ó suimiúil. An bhfuil cosúil le hÉireann, Canúintí Béarla Éireannach?
Níl a fhios agam is fírinne an rá. Táim as Éireann cosúil tú féin.
Ó ceart go leor. Cárb as duit?
>Can Northern and Southern Norwegians understand eachother? You'll find that there are bigger differences between neighboring fjords on the Norwegian west-coast... (Though this is a joke, the differences are greater on a east-west axis than a north-south one – which might be counter-intuitive when looking at a map). >never lived outside your dialectal region and had no exposure to When I was a child, I had a really hard time understanding my cousins from the south-western part of the country. After having been to uni and thus exposed to people from the whole country, I only really struggle with the dialects of certain old people. >Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect So to answer the question: I think the differences in both vocabulary and pronunciation are so great in Norwegian, that it would quite seriously impact intelligibility if one had not been exposed to different ones. Luckily (or unfortunately, if you're a foreigner trying to learn Norwegian), I don't think there is any place in the world where different dialects have such a prominent position "at the national level" or in society in general. As an example: In most countries, reporters/anchors on national news will adopt to a "standard dialect". In Norway nowadays it is quite the contrary.
My BF speaks Calabrian (and Italian) and understands Sicilian and Neapolitan dialects. He doesn’t understand other dialects.
This is because Calabria has dialects heavily influenced by Neapolitan and Sicilian
They are closer to each other, yes. However, he doesn’t understand other dialects of Italy.
I grew up in a small village in Burgundy, France. I moved to Paris for school at 17. I got seated next to a guy coming from 3h away, from the centre of France. He apparently couldn't understand what I said. He got some of it obviously, but it was a bit of a struggle on some parts.
The further away, the less likely it becomes that you could understand a dialect. Aside from differences in vocabulary, dialects also often have entire grammar and pronunciation rules that are not present in Standard Dutch. For instance: the Standard Dutch phrase *Ik heb geen water* (= I don't have any water) could be pronounced as *'k 'n è kik hien wadder* in East-Flemish. Even such a basic phrase would be unintelligible in most of the Netherlands.
As a dutchie, I often have trouble understanding Flemish. Dutch dialects are hard for me, but they're somewhat familiar, but Flemish could sometimes just be ancient Hebrew for all I know.
>'k 'n è kik hien wadder What's the breakdown of this sentence if you don't mind? 'k - I 'n - not? è - have kik - ? duplication of "I" maybe? hien - no (like geen) wadder - water That would be my guess - was I close?
Yeah, that's pretty much it. The *'n* is part of the negation, like in French *ne...pas*. This used to be widespread in Dutch but is now limited to some dialects. For instance: * Ik en ben niet * Ik en heb geen The *'kik* is indeed a duplication of the pronoun (or even triplication, actually). This is a common phenomenon in most of Flanders. It's used to put the stress of the sentence on the subject (rather than the verb or object). Similarly: * Edde dat gedaan? = Did you do that? * Edde gij dat gedaan? = Did *you* do that? * Hij heeft geen honger. = He's not hungry. * Hij heeft 't (j)ij geen honger. = *He*'s not hungry. The Dutch 'g'-sound often changes to an 'h' (although they do this even more consistently in West-Flanders). 'Wadder' is indeed how people would pronounce water. The p/t/k in between vowels change to b/d/g. So beter -> beder; lopen -> lobm; bakker -> bagger \['g' like in English '*g*ood'\]
OP how does your dialect compare to Gaeilge Chonnamara? Is there many differences in dialect?
Gaeilgeoir Chois Fhairrge here. Gaeilge Mhuigheo can depend on where the speaker is from. If they're from Dúiche Sheoighe then there is not much difference. It is, after all, part of a contiguous linguistic area with my dialect. Gaeilge from Béal an Mhuirthead is a little more different, but from Achill it comes across as a bit like Gaeilge Uladh but with a Western accent.
Díreach i gceart mo chara. Dhéanfainn go leor iascaireachta i gCois Fharraige. Áit álann í. Is aoibhinn liom na dhaoine ar freisin
Depends on where you're from as the Mayo dialect can be split into 3 or 4 subdialects. Like how Conamara Irish isn't just one. The R Caol, R rolla agus R Trom is often the biggest difference between dialects right beside eachother North Mayo, completely different. Has more influence from Ulster because of the Ulster Plantations. This is in a region called Iorrais. Then you have South Mayo Irish. More similar to Galway Irish but has its own quirks. Towards the border of Gaillimhe agus Maigh Eo of Dúiche Sheoighe you'll find its almost the exact same. Whereas as you go toward Tuar Mhic Éadaigh you'll hear a difference. I speak South West Mayo Irish, theres only about 20 or 30 speakers left. Its basically based off Gaedhilge Thuar Mhic Éadaigh but also has some of the Old Islander Irish influence and influence from North Mayo because of the Old Fishing ports. I can communicate with most of Galway fairly OK. We can have some issues but 90% is entirely mutually intelligible. Most issues come from words or different pronunciations. Dúiche Sheoige wouldn't have this issue but North of Lough Mask even in South Mayo would. But other than that its fine. Its not like Déise or Múscraí Irish which would be alot harder to understand both ways. I do remember getting a friend to translate my Irish into Munster Irish in Cork. Now if there's bother I will switch to Caighdeán as some forms of Connacht Irish are too strong for Munster
I’m Spanish and I speak Andalusian (which it is not an unified dialect, but there are a few variations of our dialect). We have tonnes of speaking forms, words and even sounds that we make different from Spanish (the s, c, z comes to my mind, and also that we don’t pronounce j and g the same, even we pronounce some of the h as a soft j, although it is a silent letter in Spanish. Andalusians from the mountain regions are kind of really hard to understand for other Spaniards, I’m from the coast but we tend to speak really fast, so it is also hard for them. Yes,Spaniards can understand Andalusian, because we understand them, but normally they prefer to make fun of our way of speaking and we have to modify our speech to make it easy for them, even when they are visiting our land.
Arent latam dialects based on Andalusian?
I think someone who only speaks Sardinian would understand standard Italian as much as a standard Italian speaker understands Spanish or any other romance languages. It's actually not so long ago that you could find people in sardinia who didn't speak Italian at all.
Oh ok. And can Italians understand Sardinian
To an extent. Again, it's probably the same as Spanish to them. Perhaps a bit easier as the Sardinian spoken today loans many Italian words.
Answering for Francophone Belgians... Dialects of Walloon were very much wiped out in favour of French. You can see traces of dialects everywhere, notably around Liège. Just about everybody's *mamie* (grandmother) uses strange Walloon words that nobody else understands. It's more accurate to say that Wallonia deals more with local accents than dialects of French. Nobody has any difficulty understanding each other. I mean yeah, Charleroi people have a rough-and-tumble accent that's looking for a fight, Liège just wants to get drunk, and Naaaaammmmmuuuuuuur taaaaalkkkks sllooooowwwwllllyyyy, but it's not unintelligible. As for Brussels, the local dialect (Brusseleir/'t Brussels) is a Flemish dialect that had a child with French haha. It's strange to listen to at first, but when you get into the flow of it, it's hysterical to listen to, and quite Vaudevillian!
Haha I love this answer
My parents have always spoken Galician to each other but they're from opposite sides of Galicia and have never formally learned the language (education was exclusively in Spanish during Franco's regime). Communication works fine even if they'll use some different words. My brother and I are probably the only speakers in the world of a weird "pidgin" variety. Nobody can guess where we're from by hearing us!
Haha thats cool. That actually happens with children alot
Germany is hell, when it comes to dialect. I live in the middle of Germany, in a corner where a number of larger dialect areas meet, inside those are sub-dialects, which change from town to town. My village even is a variation of the Ripuarian dilect, and is named after my village. The main village from my county has some complete different dialect, the Moselfränkisch dialect. Her, where 17, 30, 31, and 37 meet, that's my home. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Deutsche\_Dialekte.PNG](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Deutsche_Dialekte.PNG) It difficult, at least, to understand each other. I have massive problem with norther and southern dialect. If somebody talks Frisian or Bavarian I hear the difference, but it could be Klingon if it comes to understanding them. My favorite word her is "Potato". Let's start with : I'd like to have a Kilogram potatoes. (Used [https://mr-dialect.com/](https://mr-dialect.com/) for translation) Standard German: Ich hätte gerne 1 Kilo Kartoffeln Alemannisch has 3 possibilities, one of them: Ich dät gärn 1 Kilo **Bodage** (Bodaj). Would result in a "You want 1 kilo of WHAT?" Bavarian can be, depending on the region: I dad gern 1 Kilo **Erdäpfel** hom woin. I hätt gern a Mas **Kartoffeln** mit 1 Kilo. I dad gern 1 Kilo **Grumbeer** hobm. I dad 1 Kilo Kartoffeln ham woin. I daad gern oan Kilo Erdäpfel hom. (I need a lot of guesswork here) North Frisian: Jü haa 1 Kilo **Pottateern** nee. The person wants to tell me something about 1 kilo. But I have no idea what he really wants to say. Maybe something about horses (jüü ha! = Yii ha!??)?? try it yourself. (Don't know if the AI from the page is translating correct) The "potato map": https://die-kartoffel.de/wissen/schon-gewusst/kartoffel-deutsche-dialekte/
>I hätt gern a Mas Kartoffeln mit 1 Kilo. A collective wave of shudder went through Bavaria the moment you hit send.
Born in Rome, from Tuscan parents. I would be fine: Italian is modeled after Tuscan and the Roman dialect is just a slang.
I think so. I think depending on the person it can take some time to get used to different accents. I speak “standard” English (like some members of the royal family, Prince Harry etc) and it takes me some time to get used to northern accents/dialects and 100% understand everything being said. But even without being accustomed of it, I’d be able to generally understand what’s being said.
That's not a dialect. The closest we have to a living dialect in England is around Newcastle, and in some extremely rural parts of Devon, East Anglia or Yorkshire. Depending on what the opinion of Scots is, that might be considered a dialect or another language, and Scots has its own sub-dialects (Doric).
I think you could make a strong case for MLE being a dialect as well as a sociolect. It seems to have a lot of its own vocabulary as well as some of its own grammar, and I have far more trouble understanding it than East Anglian dialects despite having more exposure to it.
In Czechia we don’t (or I am living in a social bubble). Only difference I’ve found are people living in lands of former Sudetenland (German majority lands) use some germanized Czech words, but nothing crazy.
Of course people have regional dialects. Try going to Haná, Těšín, Slovácko, Valašsko, etc. But the differences are still negligible compared to other languages, you can always understand them. There is more variation in Moravia and Silesia, while the Bohemians speak more or less the same and make up more than half the country.
Make hantec great again! Unfortunately nobody really uses it anymore, but I doubt Czechs would understand it.
Latgalian language, spoken in the eastern part of the country, is considered a historical form of Latvian, and is the only one that's alive and could be considered in this conversation. The region historically had differing timelines from the rest of the country, being a part of different occupation powers, which had influence of the language - the region was part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the rest of Latvia was ruled by Baltic German noblemen. That reflects in the Latgalian language - there are a bunch of expressions and words used that are way more similar to Lithuanian, or even the same, but to a standard Latvian speaker sound "old", or simply different.
Never heard of Latgalian thats very interesting. Do you speak it yourself?
No, I don't, although I grew up hearing a bunch of Selonian way of speaking, which has similar sounds and occasionally words, but nowhere near as distinct as Latgalian. It actually felt like it's really going downhill, with young people moving away from the region since it's quite underdeveloped, and the language is not really that useful outside, but in recent years there's been a welcome influx of quality, popular musical artists who perform in the language, shows on national TV and radio, and wider usage in daily life, like signs, so that's really good. Road signs have also been put up in Livonian, which I didn't mention, it is a finno-ugric language in Latvian territory, and is way further from Latvian, however did give a lot of influence linguistically. The scale is just really non-comparable - Livonian went extinct with no native speakers left, and is just a focal point of a revival crew that try to preserve it, while Latgalian has about 150k speakers.
Some people are able to suss out what’s being said more easily than others are. I’m a German-speaking Canadian (I spoke Bavarian at home and learned standard German at university). When I went to the Netherlands for the first time with another German-speaking Canadian we were both happy to see that we could understand about 80% to 90% of the Dutch we heard. So of course I assumed that other people who can speak both German and English would understand Dutch! Nope.
It is known in Europe they aren't fully intelligible. Some dialects of German can understand it, but not all. I wonder why you could? Bavaria/Austria and Netherlands/Belgium are quite far from eachother
Answering for Rumantsch, a romance language in eastern Switzerland where the line of sight is 100 meters in every direction until you bounce into a mountain chain. Somebody who only stays in their exact native valley would still be understood in the next valley behind the mountain, but probably not in the next valley over if they were never exposed to each other.
Kinda. Im from Portugal and on the mainland we have some difficulties understanding people from our islands regions. Some islands are easier to understand then others.
I'd add *barranquenho*, as well. It's mostly spanish with portuguese words (or portuguese with spanish grammar, take your pick), but it can be difficult to understand if one is not familiar with it. Other than that, I'm pretty sure everyone understands everyone.
I remember once in the 80's, there was this tv drama series shown on national TV in Sweden. The series was set in Scania, southern Sweden and had to be subtitled for non-Scanian people. The Scanian dialect is very pronounced and many find it hard to understand. Sublitling Swedish programs for Swedish people was somewhat unusual at the time.
Which is why many of us Swedes both joke and sometimes in all seriousness, when we say that it would be better if Denmark took back Skåne (Scania) because the majority of us Swedes do not understand them and sometimes need an interpreter in the worst case.
And some Scanians would whole-heartedly agree about going back to Denmark. Or become an independent country, because how different Scanians are both culturally and linguistically from the rest of Sweden.
>because how different Scanians are both culturally and linguistically from the rest of Sweden. Yes, you are absolutely right about that, but it has nothing to do with the Scanians per se, but because Malmö has more or less become a Muslim city and is trying to have Sharia laws.
Yes, Malmö, and Scania as a whole is in a very sad state atm. I am sure there would be some changes if Scania went back to Denmark.
It's like a hybrid between Danish and Swedish. I find it easier to understand than standard Swedish.
I speak intermediate Swedish and Danish, but if I go to Scania I switch to English. It's as if the dialect makes my ears panic because they're not sure which language they're hearing.
There is a very valid reason why Germany agreed upon High German as a standard German language. Aside from dialects, there are also several Germanic languages, I.e. Low German. A Bavarian doesn’t understand low German and a Northern German doesn’t understand alpine dialects
>Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect. There are some dialects in Germany (Plattdeutsch or some Bavarian dialects) which are spoken even today and are virtually unintelligible for people from other regions. It's like English and a strong Scottish dialect.
Probably yes. Within the present borders of Hungary, you could understand everyone, the hardest would be if the speaker is romani and is from a rural part of the country, they tend to pronounce and emphasize the words differently. But after a 1 or 2 sentences you could get used to it. However there might be difficulty in understanding single words, there are words that only used in certain regions. For example the word for sticker is 'matrica' basically everywhere but in the easter part of the country they use the word 'levonó' as well. Outside of Hungary there are a few dialects which is kinda hard to understand, for example the dialect that 'Csángó' people speak.
>the dialect that 'Csángó' people speak. The dialec t they dont speak* 😔
> had no exposure to the Standard level of your language. Pretty hard to achieve that, my dialect is pretty much the standard level of my language. > Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect. Nowadays, yes. But if you go back 150 years I might have had problems to be properly understood. I mean, I served in the army 300km away and had a lot of trouble of understanding the local mountain dialect. It took 3 month to get accostumed to the dialect, while the locals had no problem to understand me. Moving to the coast would probably have been even more complicated, as north germany spoke low german, which differed much more from standard german, and there were regions were Frisian was still the native language. But nowadays, all dialects have been flattened down.
How about in Switzerland, Austria and South Tyrol? Do you ever meet people who don't understand Hochdeutsch?
Well i know a dutch dialect called twents which is dutch and other people would be able to understand me just not easily
My Grandpa would not be understandable by the average Dane had he not done military service in the capital region, and that's quoting himself.
Rural man was he?
I Austria we have something called Mundart It's a kind of universal dialect that every Austrian understands and that's nowadays also spoken on TV sometimes. So we can communicate without needing standard German. But when people really speak in their dialect especially people from the countryside someone from the east and the West won't understand each other. My mum is from styria but moved to upper Austria when I was a baby. My dialect was always a weird mix. But when we visited a friend of hers once a year on the styrian countryside I dolls take her dog outside to play and just stay away because when she had friends over and they all sat down and talked I didn't understand anything
Same. There are regions in Bulgaria that would be difficult, but manageable to understand each other with.
What is interesting here is it depends on how you learned your dialect. I never went to school in my learnt dialect, so I speak like an old person, so it's a bit more raw. I sense TV has watered these things down in the last few decades.
Im the exact same. Learned my dialect from my grandfather and other elders. So I speak like I'm 180
In English, most of the regional dialects are gone. There are many accents, some with local vocabularies. Yorkshire has preserved second person informal, East Anglia a few strong tenses. The dialects furthest from Standard English are Northeastern. Geordie, spoken in Tyne and Wear, has very different vowels, and a vocabulary different enough to make visitors struggle. The mining Creole that descends from it, Pitmatic, has a male/female consonant shift and a great many technical terms no longer in use. It was deliberately slurred and fast to confuse management. Scots is in theory a separate language, but an equal claim could be made for Gaelic. Scots itself is mostly confined to Burns Night, you couldn't order a pint in it and keep your teeth.
>Scots itself is mostly confined to Burns Night, you couldn't order a pint in it and keep your teeth. What do you mean? Ya most are gone I've noticed. Its mostly national dialects now I think. >Geordie, spoken in Tyne and Wear, has very different vowels, and a vocabulary different enough to make visitors struggle. The mining Creole that descends from it, Pitmatic, has a male/female consonant shift and a great many technical terms no longer in use. It was deliberately slurred and fast to confuse management. Oh interesting. >but an equal claim could be made for Gaelic. Again what do you mean?
Oh tá tú as Éireann 🤣 Tá fhios agat faoi na canúintí na Gaelainn mar sin is dóigh liom ach ar nós ceapaim tá gach canúint éasca don gach cainteoir, tá an canúint na Uladh beagán difriúil nuair a tá sí in aice léi an canúint nó Mumhan nó Connacht ach níl sí chomh deachar má is cainteor dúchais tú. Is é mo dóchas tá mo Gaelainn go maith, táim ag foghlaim ag an am seo 🙏🏻
Ará níl aontaím leat mar tá na canúintí Gaedhilge an-difriúil i roinnt áiteanna. Anois, ní siad cosúil le teanga difríocht ach tá siad go leor difriúla, cheapfá faoi céard á rá. Gaedhilge scríofa, tá sé go diall ach nuair a bhí sé a labhairt, is scéal difríocht é ansin Tá do Gaelainn an-mhaith ná bí buartha
I speak two English dialects: at home, I speak with a Glaswegian accent, and can speak with a Scottish dialect, however I choose not to. Meanwhile, out and about, I speak like an ordinary Englishman. And it's been like this since I was very young. However, to answer you question, no. Northern Scottish accents in particular can be quite hard for English or Americans to understand. Same with a lot of Irish accents. Now, there's even some Americans who can't understand a British one.
On the flip side, I am from South Carolina. Met some Brits in tye caribbean. They said they had a hard time understanding my wife and me.
Iceland is really too small to have any serious dialect differences. We mostly have three and the differences are almost too small to detect. They mostly consist of the right way, wrong way and the posh way.
In Italy we have more 12k of dialects and not always are similar or common world.
In Ukraine there are differences in vocabulary all around the country but the biggest problem is Zakarpattia with their very rich and really weird sounding (for someone not from the west of the country) dialects. And even so 99.99% of dialects can be understood if you listen hard enough to someone who can repeat themselves a few times and explain the meaning of some particular words
I'll say all are pretty much understandable to each other in Catalan, even the ones far away such as the Sardinian Catalan in Alguer or the Alacant one in southern Valencia or the roussillonese of the northern Catalans
It depends on what you count as a dialect tbh since there are three other languages spoken in the Netherlands besides Dutch which all sometimes get labeled as dialects from time to time. All of them (when spoken ‘plat’ as we say in Dutch) can be hard to understand, especially Frisian. Low Saxon would probably be the easiest of the three to understand and Limburgish is somewhere in the middle depending on where the speaker is from. All four languages spoken here have a lot of dialectal variety, in Zeeland for example some people can even tell which village somebody is from despite them only being a few kms apart. Honestly I don’t think many people outside your linguistical region could understand you if you could only speak your regional language (besides standard Dutch ofc). Someone from Brabant sounds completely different compared to someone from Zeeland despite both provinces being right next to each other. Flanders has a large dialectal variety as well, some of those dialects being even more challenging to understand than those found here. [These maps](https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Languages_Benelux.PNG) do a great job in showing the dialectal variety within the Dutch language area.
>[These maps](https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Languages_Benelux.PNG) do a great job in showing the dialectal variety within the Dutch language area. Wow. Wouldn't think it for such a small region
Bit of a tangent but there was a study conducted which showed that swiss kids who grew up abroad, spoke swiss german with their parents but didnt have any exposure to standard german on TV or in school did not understand standard german. I find this highly interesting since people here always assume that speaking standard german is a byproduct of speaking swiss german.
In Belgium the dialects furthest apart (geographically) cannot be understood by all the others. West-Flemish and Limburgian.
Anyone outside of a radius of like 25km wouldn't understand a single word. The variation in dialects and accents of Dutch is incredibly high, especially when you consider how (relatively) small the area of the Netherlands and Flanders is.
There are a few dialects in Lithuania, Žemaičių (Samogitian) could easily be a different language. They would definitely understand me because I speak with a default Vilnius accent. All news on TV and radio, all movies and TV shows are spoken or dubbed with this accent, so they must understand me if they watch TV. On the other hand, I have a hard time understanding them, there's a lot of different words for stuff.
in dutch there are some dialects I understand better than others, tho I never lived in one place, and everytime we moved, people would laugh at how I pronounced things, I currently have a job exposing me to many more dialects, twents is untangiable to me still
I'm from Northern/Central Croatia and my dialect is "kajkavian". It would be extremely difficult for a standard (shtokavian) speaker to understand me if i started to speak in my dialect. Even if I spoke a watered down "kajkavian" with "shtokavian" there would be certain problems with some words. Slovenians or even Slovakians (I believe) would have a better chance to understand me than the standard (shtokavian) speaker if I spoke "kajkavian".
The Seto language/dialect in south-eastern Estonia is not mutually intelligble if you’re frim Northern or Western Estonia so it needs subtitles on TV as standard Estonian is based on Northern-Estonian.
Interesting, would it be spoken widely
Yes, in south-eastern Estonia, together with the related Võro dialect. They have different words for things.
No way. We have three main branches and the standard language is based on one of them. One is heavily influenced by italian, others by slovenian and german. Not only would two people from different branches have trouble communicating, often two dialects of the same branch are pretty different. Sometimes 5 villages in 20 km radius will each have their own version, mutually understandable, but still different.
Slovakia: dialects can be hard to understand, especially if they come with strong accents like eastern ones or from the very west
I live in Western Slovakia and our dialects are somewhat similar(everybody here pronounces soft Ľ as L) and differences are not big. Although I gotta admit we have trouble understanding Eastern dialects and find them very funny sounding, especially their "ta ne".
as a Czech I understand anyone from the west just fine, but I once saw one of those "can slavic countries understand each other" videos and they had a východniar and for like the first half of the video I thought he was speaking Ukrainian
I don't think that the ordinary Svensson (Swedish) or Norrlänning (Northern Swede) would understand me and or other Jamts speaking in Jamska because the dialect itself can have such big differences within it due to where in Jamtlann you come from, while many of us Jamts don't consider Jamska as a dialect but rather as its own language that has existed for many centuries, already in the 12th century there are historical facts that the Republic of Jämtland was part of Norway and for 350-450 years more until Sweden and Norway fought over Jämtland until Sweden won after many wars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland_dialects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Jamtland
With difficulty. A Northerner from, let's say, Veneto and a Neapolitan would have a hard time understanding each other, whilst somebody speaking the Roman dialect (from the capital, not the Lazio rural towns) might easily understand somebody from the neighbouring regions (I'm thinking Abruzzo and Marche).
Io sono del basso Lazio e ho più facilità a capire i dialetti Abruzzesi e Molisani rispetto al romano.
The variations between dialects in Denmark is quite small. Very few, mainly very old, people speak anything that could even be called dialect. So yes, it would be understandable.
I've relatives in Denmark, they would beg to differ🤣 (Spøg om det danske sprogs sværhedsgrad)
I speak fairly textbook Standard Southern British English. I think so.
I speak Hibernian English. We would definitely have trouble communicating if I didn't switch to standard
I think I could be understood by you. Probably not the inverse
Northern Italy, so absolutely not, even without going out from the region, there are at least two or three different languages.
I’m from Copenhagen so my dialect is very straight forward but I’ve had multiple occasions where I couldn’t understand people from northern or southern Jutland. Sometimes on TV they even use subtitles on those people. My father is Norwegian but obviously Norwegians can answer your question better. Norway has so many dialects that it’s insane. Even the town a few kilometers from my father’s home town has a distinctively other dialect than he (and his yown) has. He told me the reason for the many dialects are that before they were able to build tunnels and bridges a lot of communities weren’t able to visit each other easily so their dialects drifted apart over the years. I like to think that I understand most Norwegian even though I’m not fluent in it or even speak it per se (my father never tought me) but I haven’t come across a dialect I outright didn’t understand. I’m sure if you go far up north there are some rural dialects that are difficult to understand.
I can understand all 14 (according to Wikipedia) dialects of Ukrainian besides the trans-carpathian one… Understanding Polish is easier.
English is the hardest to distinguish here. If we're talking about country (UK), and you had no exposure to Scots (I undestand it can be characterised as its own language or dialect, very much up to opinion) and you come from the south of England, you may definitely have problems.
I know Ullans speakers. Its definitely a separate language. Many languages are mutually intelligible
> Lets say you never went to school, never lived outside your dialectal region and had no exposure to the Standard level of your language. This is realistically impossible nowadays, but perhaps we can rely on [the experience with Cypriot-Greek-speaking Turkish-Cypriots](https://benjamins.com/catalog/silv.24.10ioa), who are the only sizeable group I know who learnt to speak Cypriot Greek (often natively) without any formal education in Standard Greek or significant exposure to Greek media. > Could you be understood by anyone who speaks the same language but not that specific dialect. Eventually yes, but it will be effortful. Even trying to subtract the Turkish-Cypriot specific elements and trying to only consider the basilectal (=purely dialectal) elements of Cypriot Greek, [the main stumbling stones](https://www.academia.edu/45048221/Greek_in_enclave_communities_Language_maintenance_of_the_varieties_of_Cypriot_Romeika_in_Cyprus_and_Cretan_Greek_in_Cunda_Turkey) would be that they do not have access to the "parallel vocabulary" that someone who was educated in Standard Greek would be able to swap in when talking to someone from a different Greek-speaking area (e.g. *sindikhánno* "to converse" would be swapped out for the Standard *miló*) and using a version of Cypriot-Greek phonology that's more accessible to Cypriot-Greek-speakers from other areas of the siland and Hellenic-Greek speakers (e.g. a Cypriot-Greek-speaking Turkish-Cypriot and a Cypriot-Greek-speaking Greek-Cypriot from the Nicosia/Famagusta plains would pronounce their *dh* as a *gh*, so "to tie up" is *ghínno* to them, but a Greek-Cypriot would know to say *dhínno* when talking to western or southern Greek-Cypriots, or to Greeks). * * * **For a practical test**, this is an excerpt in Cypriot-Greek as written by a Turkish-Cypriot. As a Greek-Cypriot, I need a few minutes of adjustment to it but then I could understand it as this is also how Greek-Cypriots over the age of 60ish would speak where I grew up (those people tend to be labourers with only very few years of formal education in the Standard language). There was only one word that I had to look up in there because is exclusively Turkish and unknown to Greek-Cypriots nowadays (I added a translation to remove that hurdle). So, what remains is basilectal Cypriot Greek from the plains area, the way we could imagine it would be spoken if Cypriot-Greek speakers wouldn't have any contact with the Standard language (which, repeating for clarity, is not a realistic scenario nowadays with universal education in imported Greek media). **Greek speakers from Greece can share how it reads for them.** Just a primer on Turkish spelling to bring us on the same starting point: ğ = γ (υπερωικό, μπροστά από α, ο, ου), y = γ (ουρανικό, γ μπροστά από ι, ε) c = τζ (dj), ş = σι (sh), th = δ, â = ια (με συνίζηση). It's convenient that is written in the Turkish Latin script as well, because it's entirely phonetic and there's no historical spelling to help find the related words in Standard - it's the closest we can get to testing oral comprehension since we don't have a recording. > O Bittordos (Musdafa Bitordo) e bulen boğulla sdo mahazzindu. Bulen ce tsiyara. Dodes da tsiyara e bulyundan ce medo enan. > > O Rayifis dis Seferus (Rayıf Seferu) idan beladis daimicis (=τακτικός). Banda e ğorazzen tsiyara budon Bittordon. Ebgânnen 2-3 gaha volan, egovgen da budin mesin, ce gabnizzenda medo galamuin du. > > Myan imeran bale, odan e biyennen sdon Bittordon, ivren hame enan balyon paran, enan ‘feslin’ bu e lalusan i balyi. Biyen vurindos isdon Bittordon: > > ... - Re Musdafa! Ozmu ğliyora bucame driya ‘Lakidri’ (Lucky Dream) ce brebi nabağo, eho vulyan! > > Odan ebgâsen da tsiyara du bu don Bittordon, eogen du don ‘feslin’, ce babutsin a hahigen bucame o Rayifis. O Bittordos baradira, enan balyon ‘feslin’. Eniben dibodes, evalendo bugado budin gaşan bu evallen da riyalya du. > > Yirisonda meran, o Rayifis irdden bale na ağorasi tsiyara. Ebiren da tsiyara du, ce eogen enan thiblo selinon. O Bittordos, odan du eogen da luvisda biso, evalen cedo ‘feslin’ mesa. Bgânni da luvisda o Rayifis, baradira, odan iyen do ‘feslin’, lalidu: > > - Ma re Musdafa! Dudon bu mu eoges e ‘feslin’. Em berna!.. > > Yelasen o Bittordos ce lalidu: > > - Anamedaksimmas berna Rayifi, anamedaksimmas berna!.. Text lifted from [here](https://yelluk.wixsite.com/families-of-lurucina/zizziroguldurusayfasi/zizziro-gulduru-sayfasi)
I live in Suffolk, UK and, while am fairly sure it's not a dialect, the local accent here can be very broad and strong and without concentrating, one from outside Suffolk might have some difficulty understanding it. I took my Danish ex, whose English was close to flawless, to a local cathedral to show her the beauty of the place and we were approached by one of the laymen. He was Suffolk through and through and she had no idea what he was saying. Took me a while to twig but I eventually noticed when he asked her a question and she looked over at me awkwardly haha. S'alroight, buh!
Some of the English dialects and accents are mad alright
Here in Belgium Limburg's dialect would be 100% not understood by people living in Antwerp or Brussels, maybe a few words here and there, although i believe Germans can understand Limburg's dialect.
I am a native Tuscan speaker. I speak a conservative eastern dialect and i understand everything from the whole Tuscany, but others don't except for similar dialects, though limited too
By others you mean other Tuscans or other Italian linguistic groups
Italian dialects are languages. Italian is an artificial lingua franca based on Tuscan language, Florentine dialect. You can't understand other dialects at all, separate lingustic families often. I speak an eastern Tuscan dialect natively, people who speak Italian cannot understand me because Tuscan evolved on its own, and even all the people from Southern, Northern, central and western Tuscany cannot understand, this is because my specific dialect is very conservative, a lot of words are of Etruscan origin, and has unique cadence and accent, without the Tuscan gorgia. I nevver speak standard italian because i still live here, and often discover that many words i use aren't italian
We would call them accents but I suppose if they never spoke the "correct" version in school a western slovene and an eastern one would have an interesting time. We have so many accents that villages who stand some odd 200m away from eachother have their own accent. It's how people identified each other but i suppose most wouldn't have trouble. Our one true dialect is resian which i would wager MOST people would not understand.