- This page covers the West Frisian language, spoken in the Netherlands.
- For other Frisian languages see Frisian language (disambiguation).
Frisian (varyingly Frysk, Frasch, Fresk, or Friisk) is a language spoken by a small ethnic group living in the northwestern part of Europe. In origin, the Frisian language is Germanic,
the ancient Frisian community figuring prominently in North European history. They were especially noted as traders and raiders
during Viking times.
Frisian consists of several dialects, which are very often mutually
unintelligible. At the most basic level, there are three dialectal divisions, West Lauwers Frisian 'Frysk', Saterland Frisian 'Seeltersk', and North Frisian. The North Frisian language is, however, further segmented into several additional
strongly unique speech forms.
The northern dialects include Mainland dialects, Island dialects, and the Heligoland dialect. There is such a strong difference between the island and mainland forms of the North Frisian
language that it has been speculated that the mainland and insular areas may have been originally populated by two separate waves
of ancient Frisian colonizers, these migrations occurring in entirely different eras.
Frisian is distinct from East Frisian Low Saxon (see
below).
Most Frisian speakers live in the Netherlands, primarily in the province
of Friesland ("Fryslân" in Frisian) where the number of native speakers is about
350,000. An increasing number of Dutch native speakers in the province of Friesland are able to speak the language. In Germany, there are about 2,000 speakers of Frisian in the Saterland region of Lower Saxony, the Saterland's marshy
fringe areas having long protected Frisian speech there from pressure by the surrounding Low German and High German languages.
In the Nordfriesland (Northern Frisia) region of the German province
of Schleswig-Holstein, there are 10,000 Frisian speakers. While
many of these Frisians live on the mainland, most are found on the islands, notably Sylt,
Föhr, Amrum, and Heligoland. The local corresponding Frisian dialects are still in use.
Frisian is officially recognized and protected as a minority
language in Germany and is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands.
Old Frisian was highly similar to Old English, and
historically, Frisian is classified as the closest existing language to English. For example, the Frisian for "green cheese" is "griene tsiis", whereas in Dutch it is "groene kaas". One rhyme demonstrates the similarity of the two
languages: "Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese," which is pronounced more or less the same in both
languages (Frisian: "Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Fries.")
This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingvaeonic sound shift, which affected Frisian and English, but not or hardly the other
West Germanic varieties. However, such classifications,
where possible, are based on studies of the earliest written forms of languages, so in the case of Frisian and English, they do
not take into account the centuries of drift of English away from Frisian norms. Thus the modern languages are completely
unintelligible to each other, partly due to the marks Low Franconian
languages (such as Dutch) and Low Saxon/Low German have left on Frisian.
Indeed, Frisian has itself been brought progressively closer to Dutch as a consequence of the political subordination of
Friesland to the ethnic Dutch. The language as it was spoken in northern North Holland (West Friesland) is now completely extinct. In Friesland itself Stadsfries ("City Frisian"), probably a dialect of Dutch, from the 16th century onwards made massive gains
in the cities, and in these cities eventually became almost the only native language, but in the 20th century its use dropped
again, in favour of Dutch and Frisian. Elsewhere in the former area of Frisian, Low Saxon has come to predominate, with dialects
of East Frisian Low Saxon now known generically as "Frisian".
The earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century. A few examples of runic inscriptions from the region 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.
Actual Frisian writings appear a few centuries later, and are generally restricted to legalistic writings — this the
Old Frisian period.
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