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group of Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 native speakers is about 400,000 An increasing num-
Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the ber of native Dutch speakers in the province are learning
North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Frisian as a second language.
The Frisian languages are the closest living language In Germany, there are about 2,000[6] speakers of Sater-
group to English languages, and are together grouped into land Frisian in the Saterland region of Lower Saxony;
the Anglo-Frisian languages. However, modern English the Saterland’s marshy fringe areas have long protected
and Frisian are unintelligible to each other. Rather, the Frisian speech there from pressure by the surrounding
three Frisian languages have been heavily influenced by Low German and standard German.
and bear similarities to Dutch, Danish, and/or Low Ger-
In the Nordfriesland (North Frisia) region of the German
man, depending upon their respective locations. Addi-
state of Schleswig-Holstein, there were 10,000 North
tional shared linguistic characteristics between the Great
Frisian speakers in the 1970s.[1] Although many of these
Yarmouth area, Friesland, and Denmark are likely to have
live on the mainland, most are found on the islands, no-
resulted from the close trading relationship these areas
tably Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and Heligoland. The local cor-
maintained during the centuries-long Hanseatic League
responding North Frisian dialects are still in use.
of the Late Middle Ages.[4]
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 Frisian, by using the
1 Division Frisian plural as a linking morpheme. Speakers who had
Frisian as their first language often maintained the Frisian
system of no homophony when speaking Frisian.[7]
There are three varieties of Frisian: West Frisian,
Saterland Frisian, and North Frisian. Some linguists con- Speakers of the many dialects of Frisian may also be
sider these three varieties, despite their mutual unintel- found in the United States.[8]
ligibility, to be dialects of one single Frisian language,
whereas others consider them to be three separate lan-
guages, as do their speakers. West Frisian is strongly in- 1.2 Status
fluenced by Dutch, and, similar to Dutch, is described as
being “between” English and German. The other Frisian Saterland and North Frisian[9] are officially recognised
varieties, meanwhile, have been influenced by German, and protected as minority languages in Germany, and
Low German, and Danish. The North Frisian language West Frisian is one of the two official languages in the
especially is further segmented into several strongly di- Netherlands, the other being Dutch. ISO 639-1 code
verse dialects. Stadsfries is not Frisian, but a Dutch di- fy and ISO 639-2 code fry were assigned to “Frisian”,
alect influenced by Frisian. Frisian is called Frysk in West but that was changed in November 2005 to "Western
Frisian, Fräisk in Saterland Frisian, and Frasch, Fresk, Frisian". According to the ISO 639 Registration Au-
Freesk, and Friisk in the dialects of North Frisian. thority the “previous usage of [this] code has been
The situation in the Dutch province of Groningen and the for Western [10]
Frisian, although [the] language name was
German region of East Frisia is more complex: The lo- “Frisian”.
cal Low Saxon dialects of Gronings and East Frisian Low The new ISO 639 code stq is used for the Saterland
Saxon are a mixture of Frisian and Low Saxon dialects; Frisian language, a variety of Eastern Frisian (not to be
it is believed that Frisian was spoken there at one time, confused with East Frisian Low Saxon, a West Low Ger-
only to have been gradually replaced by the language of man dialect). The new ISO 639 code frr is used for
the city of Groningen. This local language is now, in turn, the North Frisian language variants spoken in parts of
being replaced by standard Dutch. Schleswig-Holstein.
1
2 2 HISTORY
examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th cen- Perhaps the most important figure in the spreading of the
tury, there are a few examples of runic inscriptions from Frisian language was J. H. Halbertsma (1789–1869), who
the region which are probably older and possibly in the translated many works into the Frisian language, such as
Frisian language. These runic writings however usually the New Testament [19] He had however, like Hilarides,
do not amount to more than single- or few-word inscrip- focused mostly on the vernacular of the Frisian language,
tions, and cannot be said to constitute literature as such. where he focused on translating texts, plays, and songs for
The transition from the Old Frisian to the Middle Frisian the lower and middle classes in order to teach and expand
period (c.1550-c.1820) in the sixteenth century is based the Frisian language.[19] This had begun the effort to con-
on the fairly abrupt halt in the use of Frisian as a written tinuously preserve the Frisian language, which continues
language. unto this day. It was however not until the first half of
the 20th century that the Frisian revival movement began
to gain strength, not only through its language, but also
2.2 Middle Frisian through its culture and history, supporting singing and
acting in Frisian in order to facilitate Frisian speaking.[14]
Main article: Middle Frisian
It was not until 1960 that Dutch began to dominate
Frisian in Friesland; with many non-Frisian immigrants
Up until the fifteenth century Frisian was a language into Friesland, the language gradually began to diminish,
widely spoken and written, but from 1500 onwards it be- and only survives now due to the constant effort of schol-
came an almost exclusively oral language, mainly used in ars and organizations.[19] It is especially written Frisian
rural areas. This was in part due to the occupation of its that seems to have trouble surviving, having largely dis-
stronghold, the Dutch province of Friesland (Fryslân), in appeared in the 16th century, it continues to be barely
1498, by Duke Albert of Saxony, who replaced Frisian as taught today.
the language of government with Dutch.
Frisian, Dutch and English are the three main languages
Afterwards this practice was continued under the of the education system in Friesland (‘Fryslân’). The
Habsburg rulers of the Netherlands (the German Em- province of Friesland is located in the north of the
peror Charles V and his son, the Spanish King Philip II), Netherlands. It has almost 650,000 inhabitants and a
and even when the Netherlands became independent, in surface area of 3,350 km2 . The land is typically flat
1585, Frisian did not regain its former status. The reason and about half the surface is below sea-level, protected
for this was the rise of Holland as the dominant part of by a huge dike from the North Sea. The administra-
the Netherlands, and its language, Dutch, as the dominant tive territory of the province of Friesland coincides rea-
language in judicial, administrative and religious affairs. sonably well with the geographic area where the Frisian
In this period the great Frisian poet Gysbert Japiks language is spoken today. The Frisians were one of the
(1603–66), a schoolteacher and cantor from the city of Germanic tribes in contact with the Roman Empire as at-
Bolsward, who largely fathered modern Frisian literature tested [20] by the historians Pliny and Tacitus. The conti-
and orthography, was really an exception to the rule. nuity of the people and their language is contested be-
cause of extensive flooding of the area in post-Roman
His example was not followed until the nineteenth cen- times. Frisian is an Indo-European language that can be
tury, when entire generations of Frisian authors and po- dated back to the early Middle-ages when older forms
ets appeared. This coincided with the introduction of the of Frisian, English, Dutch, German and other closely
so-called newer breaking system, a prominent grammat- related varieties branched into different West-Germanic
ical feature in almost all West Frisian dialects, with the languages. These common origins are the reason why
notable exception of Southwest Frisian. Therefore, the Frisian is sometimes referred to as the closest relative of
Modern Frisian period is considered to have begun at this English.
point in time, around 1820.
2.4 Compounding
2.3 Modern Frisian
Frisian and Dutch differ in that one exhibits homophony
The revival of the Frisian Language comes from the poet of linking and plural suffixes, whereas the other does not,
Gysbert Japiks, who had begun to write in the language as and that the presence of a homophony relation has been
a way to show that it was possible, and created a collective shown to have consequences for speakers’ intuitions about
Frisian identity and Frisian standard of writing through linking morphemes. From a more general perspective, it
his poetry.[19] Later on, Johannes Hilarides would build is known from the literature that homophony is a driv-
off Gysbert Japik’s work by building on Frisian orthog- ing force in language change. Homophony may have far-
raphy, particularly on its pronunciation; he also, unlike reaching effects; we feel justified in speaking of different
Japiks, set a standard of the Frisian language that focused systems, though we use this term, perhaps naively, to de-
more heavily on how the common people used it as an ev- scribe a difference with respect to homophony. Thus we
eryday language.[19] imply that the presence or absence of a homophony re-
4 3 FAMILY TREE
• Gronings: t Jong fleerde t wicht om kinne tou en [7] “Logging into the proxy: NetID (Rutgers University Li-
smokte heur op wange. braries)". eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu.
Retrieved 2015-10-30.
• East Frisian Low Saxon: De Fent/Jung straktde dat
Wicht um't Kinn to un tuutjede hör up de Wangen. [8] “Bookmarkable URL intermediate page”.
eds.a.ebscohost.com. Retrieved 2015-10-30.
• Dutch: De jongen aaide/streek het meisje langs
haar/de kin en kuste/zoende haar op de wangen. [9] Gesetz zur Förderung des Friesischen im öffentlichen Raum
- Wikisource (German)
• German: Der Junge streichelte das Mädchen ums
Kinn und küsste es auf die Wange. [10] Christian Galinski; Rebecca Guenther; Håvard Hjulstad.
“Registration Authority Report 2004-2005” (PDF). p. 4.
• English: The boy stroked the girl around the chin Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-20. Re-
and kissed her on the cheeks. trieved 2007-11-23.
• Swedish: Pojken strök/smekte flickan på hakan och [11] Fishman, Joshua A. (2001-01-01). Can Threatened Lan-
kysste henne på kinden. guages be Saved?: Reversing Language Shift, Revisited :
a 21st Century Perspective. Multilingual Matters. ISBN
• Danish: Drengen strøg/aede pigen på hagen og kys- 9781853594922.
sede hende på kinden.
[12] Matthias Brenzinger, Language Diversity Endangered,
• Norwegian: Gutten strøk/kjærtegnet jenta rundt/på Mouton de Gruter, The Hague: 222
haken og kysset henne på kinnet.
[13] “Atlas of languages in danger | United Nations Edu-
cational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”. www.
5 See also unesco.org. Retrieved 2015-10-28.
[4] Gooskens, Charlotte (2004). “The Position of Frisian in [20] AILA Review 21 (2008), 87–103. doi
the Germanic Language Area”. On the Boundaries of 10.1075/aila.21.07gor ISSN 1461-0213 / e-ISSN
Phonology and Phonetics. 1570-5595 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 88
Durk Gorter and Cor van der Meer
[5] Extra, Guus; Gorter, Durk (2001-01-01). The Other
Languages of Europe: Demographic, Sociolinguistic, and
Educational Perspectives. Multilingual Matters. ISBN
6.2 General references
9781853595097.
[6] “Gegenwärtige Schätzungen schwanken zwischen 1.500 • Omniglot links to various Frisian resources
und 2.500.” Marron C. Fort: Das Saterfriesische. In:
Horst Haider Munske,Nils Århammar: Handbuch des • Tresoar - Frisian Historical and Literary Centre
Friesischen – Handbook of Frisian Studies. Niemayer
(Tübingen 2001). • “Research”. Fryske Akademy.
7
7 External links
• The Frisian foundation
• Frisian-English dictionary
• [PDF]Hewett, Waterman Thomas, The Frisian lan-
guage and literature
• Frisian radio
• Radio news in North Frisian
8 8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES
8.2 Images
• File:Bilingual_signs_German-Frisian,_police_station_Husum,_Germany_0892.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/
wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Bilingual_signs_German-Frisian%2C_police_station_Husum%2C_Germany_0892.JPG License: CC-BY-SA-
3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Arne List
• File:Brokmerbrief.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Brokmerbrief.jpg License: Pub-
lic domain Contributors: <a data-x-rel='nofollow' class='external text' href='http://www.wumkes.nl/index.php?volg=
1,<span>,&,</span>,zveld=richthofen'>K.O.J.T. von Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsquellen, Berlin: Nicolai 1840.</a> Original
artist: Osbrond (scriba)
• File:Flag_of_Germany.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/Flag_of_Germany.svg License: PD Contributors: ?
Original artist: ?
• File:Fries_hindeloopen.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Fries_hindeloopen.JPG License: CC BY-
SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Wolfhardt
• File:Frisian.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Frisian.jpg License: CC BY-SA 4.0 Contributors: Own
work Original artist: 01E ext2015
• File:Frisian_languages_in_Europe.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Frisian_languages_in_
Europe.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: This vector image includes elements that have been taken or adapted from
this: <a href='//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blank_map_of_Europe.svg' class='image'><img alt='Blank map of Europe.svg'
src='https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Blank_map_of_Europe.svg/26px-Blank_map_of_Europe.svg.png'
width='26' height='20' srcset='https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Blank_map_of_Europe.svg/39px-Blank_
map_of_Europe.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Blank_map_of_Europe.svg/52px-Blank_
map_of_Europe.svg.png 2x' data-file-width='680' data-file-height='520' /></a> Blank map of Europe.svg (by Maix). Original artist:
ArnoldPlaton, png: Hayden120
• File:Niebüll.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Nieb%C3%BCll.JPG License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Con-
tributors: first upload in de wikipedia on 22:38, 12. Jun 2005 by Timt Original artist: Timt
• File:Roomelse.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Roomelse.JPG License: Public domain Contributors:
Own work Original artist: Blautosk
• File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors: File:Wikipedia-logo.svg as of 2010-05-14T23:16:42 Original artist: version 1 by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); Wiki-
media.