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The Frisian languages ( Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh or ) are a closely related group of West Germanic languages, spoken by about 400,000 Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages. Despite the close genetic relationship between English and Frisian, the modern languages are not mutually intelligible. Geographical and historical circumstances have caused the two languages to drift apart linguistically.Charlotte Gooskens & Wilbert Heeringa: The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area, 2012, pp 21-22.
Frisian is traditionally divided into three branches often labeled distinct Frisian languages even though the dialects within each branch are not necessarily mutually intelligible. West Frisian is by far the most spoken of the three and is an official language in the Netherlands province of Friesland, where it is spoken on the mainland and on two of the West Frisian Islands: Terschelling and Schiermonnikoog. It is also spoken in four villages in the Westerkwartier of the neighbouring province of Groningen. North Frisian, the second branch, is spoken in the northernmost Germany district of Nordfriesland in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, on the mainland and on the North Frisian Islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and the Halligs. It is also spoken on the islands of Heligoland and Düne in the North Sea. The third Frisian branch, East Frisian, has only one remaining variant, Sater Frisian, spoken in the municipality of Saterland in the Lower Saxony district of Cloppenburg. Surrounded by bogs, the four Saterlandic villages lie just outside the borders of East Frisia, in the Oldenburg Münsterland region. In East Frisia proper, East Frisian Low Saxon is spoken today, which is not a Frisian language, but a variant of Low German.
For many centuries, Frisian has been strongly influenced by Dutch, and the two language areas share a long intertwined history. As a result, Dutch is the Germanic language most similar to Frisian in practice, even though Frisian is genealogically closer to English and Scots. The degree of mutual intelligibility between Frisian and Dutch is debated, with a 2005 cloze test, in which a portion of text is masked and the participant is asked to fill in the masked portion of text, showing that Dutch respondents scored 31.9% when presented with a (West) Frisian text, whereas researchers in 2012 concluded that the linguistic distance between Dutch and the Frisian dialects were slightly smaller than the distances between the Scandinavian languages, which are known to be largely mutually intelligible.
The situation in the Dutch province of Groningen and the German region of East Frisia is similar: The local Low German dialects of Gronings and East Frisian Low Saxon still bear some Frisian elements due to East Frisian substrate. Frisian was spoken there at one time, only to have been gradually replaced by Low Saxon since the Middle Ages. This local language is now, like Frisian, under threat by standard Dutch and German.
In Germany, there are about 2,000"Gegenwärtige Schätzungen schwanken zwischen 1.500 und 2.500." Marron C. Fort: Das Saterfriesische. In: Horst Haider Munske, Nils Århammar: Handbuch des Friesischen – Handbook of Frisian Studies. Niemayer (Tübingen 2001). speakers of Saterland Frisian in the marshy Saterland region of Lower Saxony. Saterland Frisian has resisted encroachment from Low German and Standard German, but Saterland Frisian still remains seriously endangered because of the small size of the speech community and of the lack of institutional support to help preserve and spread the language.
In the North Frisia ( Nordfriesland) region of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, there were 10,000 North Frisian speakers. Although many of these live on the mainland, most are found on the islands, notably Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and Heligoland. The local corresponding North Frisian dialects are still in use.
West Frisian–Dutch bilinguals are split into two categories: Speakers who had Dutch as their first language tended to maintain the Dutch system of homophony between plural and linking suffixes when speaking West Frisian, by using the West Frisian plural as a linking morpheme. Speakers who had West Frisian as their first language often maintained the West Frisian system of no homophony when speaking West Frisian.
The new ISO 639 code stq is used for the Saterland Frisian language, a variety of Eastern Frisian (not to be confused with East Frisian Low Saxon, a West Low German dialect). The new ISO 639 code frr is used for the North Frisian language variants spoken in parts of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Ried fan de Fryske Beweging is an organization which works for the preservation of the West Frisian language and culture in the Dutch province of Friesland. The
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Fryske Academy also plays a large role, since its foundation in 1938, to conduct research on Frisian language, history, and society, including attempts at forming a larger dictionary. Recent attempts have allowed Frisian be used somewhat more in some of the domains of education, media and public administration. Nevertheless, Saterland Frisian and most dialects of North Frisian are seriously endangeredMatthias Brenzinger, Language Diversity Endangered, Mouton de Gruter, The Hague: 222 and West Frisian is considered as vulnerable to being endangered. Moreover, for all advances in integrating Frisian in daily life, there is still a lack of education and media awareness of the Frisian language, perhaps reflecting its rural origins and its lack of prestige Therefore, in a sociological sense it is considered more a dialect than a standard language, even though linguistically it is a separate language.
For L2 speakers, both the quality and amount of time Frisian is taught in the classroom is low, concluding that Frisian lessons do not contribute meaningfully to the linguistic and cultural development of the students. Moreover, Frisian runs the risk of dissolving into Dutch, especially in Friesland, where both languages are used.
Frisian is the language most closely related to English language and Scots language, but after at least five hundred years of being subject to the influence of Dutch language, modern Frisian in some aspects bears a greater similarity to Dutch than to English; one must also take into account the centuries-long drift of English away from Frisian. Thus the two languages have become less mutually intelligible over time, partly due to the influence which Dutch and Low German have had on Frisian, and partly due to the vast influence some languages (in particular Norman French) have had on English throughout the centuries.
Old Frisian, however, was very similar to Old English. Historically, both English and Frisian are marked by the loss of the Germanic nasal in words like us ( ús; uns in German), soft ( sêft; sanft) or goose ( goes; Gans): see Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law. Also, when followed by some vowels, the Germanic k softened to a ch sound; for example, the Frisian for cheese and church is tsiis and tsjerke, whereas in Dutch language it is kaas and kerk, and in German language the respective words are Käse and Kirche. Contrarily, this did not happen for chin and choose, which are kin and kieze.
One rhyme demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Frisian," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages (West Frisian: "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")The History of English: A Linguistic Introduction. Scott Shay, Wardja Press, 2008, ,
One major difference between Old Frisian and modern Frisian is that in the Old Frisian period () Declension still existed. Some of the texts that are preserved from this period are from the 12th or 13th, but most are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Generally, all these texts are restricted to legalistic writings. Although the earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century, there are a few examples of runic inscriptions from the region which are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language. These runic writings however usually do not amount to more than single- or few-word inscriptions, and cannot be said to constitute literature as such. The transition from the Old Frisian to the Middle Frisian period (c.1550-c.1820) in the 16th century is based on the fairly abrupt halt in the use of Frisian as a written language.
Afterwards this practice was continued under the Habsburg rulers of the Netherlands (the German Emperor Charles V and his son, the Spanish King Philip II), and even when the Netherlands became independent, in 1585, West Frisian did not regain its former status. The reason for this was the rise of Holland as the dominant part of the Netherlands, and its language, Dutch, as the dominant language in judicial, administrative and religious affairs.
In this period the great Frisian poet Gysbert Japiks (1603–66), a schoolteacher and cantor from the city of Bolsward, who largely fathered modern West Frisian literature and orthography, was really an exception to the rule.
His example was not followed until the 19th century, when entire generations of West Frisian authors and poets appeared. This coincided with the introduction of the so-called newer Vowel breaking system, a prominent grammatical feature in almost all West Frisian dialects, with the notable exception of Southwest Frisian. Therefore, the Modern West Frisian period is considered to have begun at this point in time, around 1820.
Perhaps the most important figure in the spreading of the West Frisian language was minister Joost. H. Halbertsma (1789–1869), who translated many works into the West Frisian language, such as the New Testament He had however, like Hilarides, focused mostly on the vernacular of the West Frisian language, where he focused on translating texts, plays and songs for the lower and middle classes in order to teach and expand the West Frisian language. The compiled literary work of the Halbertsma brothers (Joost, Tjalling, and Eeltje), Rimen en Teltsjes, is regarded as the standard Frisian literary work. This had begun the effort to continuously preserve the West Frisian language, which continues unto this day. It was however not until the first half of the 20th century that the West Frisian revival movement began to gain strength, not only through its language, but also through its culture and history, supporting singing and acting in West Frisian in order to facilitate West Frisian speaking.
It was not until 1960 that Dutch began to dominate West Frisian in Friesland; with many non-Frisian immigrants into Friesland, the language gradually began to diminish, and survives now only due to the constant effort of scholars and organisations. In recent years, it has been the province of Friesland, rather than the language itself, that has become a more important part of the West Frisian identity; as such, the language has become less important for cultural preservation purposes. It is especially written West Frisian that seems to have trouble surviving, with only 30% of the West Frisian population competent in it; it went out of use in the 16th century and continues to be barely taught today.
| Onze Vader die in de hemelen zijt, |
| Uw naam worde geheiligd; |
| Uw Koninkrijk kome; |
| Uw wil geschiede, |
| gelijk in de hemel alzo ook op de aarde. |
| Geef ons heden ons dagelijks brood; |
| en vergeef ons onze schulden, |
| gelijk ook wij vergeven onze schuldenaren; |
| en leid ons niet in verzoeking, |
| maar verlos ons van de boze. |
| Want van U is het Koninkrijk en de kracht en de heerlijkheid in der eeuwigheid. Amen. |
NB:
* See also West Frisian language#Sample text.
** Which was changed to "who", in earth to "on earth," and them that to "those who" in the 1928 version of the Church of England prayer book and used in other later Anglican prayer books too. The words given here are those of the 1662 book.
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