West Frisian language

West Frisian (Frysk) is a language spoken mostly in the province of Fryslân in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside of the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related languages of East Frisian and North Frisian, which are spoken in Germany. Within the Netherlands, however, the term West Frisian is used to indicate a Dutch dialect (West Frisian dialect) spoken in the province of North Holland, while the language of the province of Fryslân is virtually always just called Frisian: Fries in Dutch, and Frysk in Frisian. The 'official' name linguists use to indicate the West Frisian language is West Lauwers Frisian, the Lauwers being the border stream separating the Dutch provinces of Fryslân and Groningen.

Speakers

Most speakers of West Frisian live in the province of Fryslân in the north of the Netherlands. This province was formerly called Friesland, but officially changed its name to Frisian Fryslân in 1997. The province has 643,000 inhabitants (2005); of these 94% can understand spoken Frisian, 74% can speak Frisian, 65% can read Frisian, and 17% can write it.

For over half of the inhabitants of the province of Fryslân, 55% (c. 354,000 people), Frisian is the native tongue. In the central east, Frisian speakers spill over the province border, with some 4-6,000 of them actually living in the province of Groningen, in the triangular area of the villages Marum (Frisian: Mearum), De Wilp (De Wylp), and Opende (De Grinzer Pein).

Also, many Frisians have left their province in the last sixty years for more prosperous parts of the Netherlands. Therefore, possibly as many as 150,000 Frisian speakers live in other Dutch provinces now, particularly in the urban agglomeration in the West, and in neighbouring Groningen and newly reclaimed Flevoland.

And then there is the surprisingly large Frisian diaspora abroad, with Fryslân having had in relative terms the highest percentage of emigrants of all Dutch provinces between the Second World War and the seventies. It is estimated that there may be as many as 80-100,000 Frisian speakers scattered around the world, with the largest concentrations located in Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Therefore, the total number of Frisian speakers in the world today may be as high as 600,000.

Apart from the use of Frisian as a first language, it is also spoken as a second language by about 120,000 people in the province of Fryslân.

Dialects

The West Frisian language consists of eight mutually intelligible dialects, of which four are widely spoken and the other four are confined to small communities of less than a hundred to several hundreds of speakers.

The least used dialect of West Frisian is Skiermûntseagersk, the island dialect of Schiermonnikoog (Frisian: Skiermûntseach), which is actually on the verge of extinction, spoken as it is by no more than 50-100 people (out of an island population of 900 people).

Hylpersk (in Dutch known as Hindeloopers), the archaic Frisian dialect of the peninsular harbour town of Hindeloopen (Hylpen), on the west coast, is still spoken by some 300 people at the most.

Skylgersk (also known as Westersk) and Aastersk are the dialects of the western and eastern parts of the island of Terschelling (Skylge) and have about 800 and 400 speakers respectively. They are separated from each other by the Dutch dialect of Midslands, which is spoken in the central part of Terschelling.

Because of their insular nature these four less-used dialects are also those that have deviated the most from mainstream Frisian. In fact, three of the four widely used mainland dialects are so much alike that a non-Frisian could probably not make out any differences.

The fourth mainland dialect, that of Súdwesthoeksk ("South Western"), which is spoken in an area called de Súdwesthoeke ("the South West Corner"), deviates from mainstream Frisian in that it does not adhere to the so-called newer breaking system, a prominent grammatical feature in the three other main dialects.

The Noardhoeksk ("Northern") dialect is spoken in the north eastern corner of the province. It actually differs from Wâldfrysk so little that it is quite often not acknowledged to be a dialect within its own right, but merely the northern variety of Wâldfrysk.

By far the two most widely spoken West Frisian dialects are Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk. Both these names are derived from the Frisian landscape. In the western and north-western parts of the province, the region where Klaaifrysk is spoken, the soil is made up of thick marine clay, hence the name Klaaifrysk, which literally means "Clay Frisian". While in the Klaaifrysk speaking area didges are used to separate the pastures, in the eastern part of the province, where the soil is sandy, and water sinks away much faster, rows of trees are used to that purpose. Therefore, the dialect spoken in the eastern area is called Wâldfrysk, meaning "Wood Frisian" or "Forest Frisian".

Although Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk are mutually very easily intelligible, there are, at least to native Frisian speakers, a few very conspicuous differences. These include the pronunciation of the words my ("me"), dy ("you"), hy ("he"), sy ("she" or "they"), wy ("we") and by ("by"), and the diphthongs ei and aai.

Of the two, Wâldfrysk probably has the most speakers, but because the western clay area was originally the more prosperous part of the mostly agricultural province, Klaaifrysk has had the larger influence on the West Frisian standardised language.

History

Old Frisian

In the early Middle Ages the Frisian lands stretched from the area around Bruges, in what is now Belgium, to the river Weser, in northern Germany. At that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. Today this region is sometimes referred to as Greater Frisia or Frisia Magna, and many of the areas within it still treasure their Frisian heritage, even though in most places the Frisian language has been lost.

Originally, Frisian was the language closest related to English, but after at least five hundred years of being subjected to the influence of Dutch it is obvious to most observers that nowadays it bears a greater similarity to Dutch than to English. Also, one has to take into account the centuries long drift of English away from Frisian. Thus the modern languages are unintelligible to each other today, partly due to the marks Low Franconian languages (such as Dutch) and Low German have left on Frisian and partly due to the vast influence some languages, in particular French, have had on English over the centuries.

Old Frisian, however, did bear a striking similarity to Old English. This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingaevonic sound shift, which affected Frisian and English, but hardly the other West Germanic varieties at all. Historically, both English and Frisian are marked by the suppression of the Germanic nasal in a word like us (ús), soft (sêft) or goose (goes): 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 it is kaas and kerk.

One rhyme demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "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.")

One major difference between Old Frisian and modern Frisian is that in the Old Frisian period (c.1150-c.1550) grammatical cases still occurred. Some of the texts that are preserved from this period are from the twelfth or thirteenth, but most are from the fourteenth and fifteenth 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 sixteenth century, is based on the fairly abrupt halt in the use of Frisian as a written language.

Middle Frisian and New Frisian

Up until the fifteenth century Frisian was a language widely spoken and written, but from 1500 onwards it became an almost exclusively oral language, mainly used in rural areas. This was in part due to the occupation of its stronghold, the Dutch province of Friesland (Fryslân), in 1498, by Duke Albert of Saxony, who replaced Frisian as the language of government with Dutch.

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, Frisian did not regain it 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 Japix (1603-66), a schoolteacher and cantor from the city of Bolsward (Boalsert), who largely fathered modern Frisian literature and orthography, was really an exception to the rule.

His example was not followed until the nineteenth century, when entire generations of Frisian authors and poets appeared. This coincided with the introduction of the so-called newer breaking system, a prominent grammatical feature in almost all West Frisian dialects, with the notable exception of Súdwesthoeksk. Therefore, the New Frisian period is considered to have begun at this point in time, around 1820.

Status

Since 1956, West Frisian has an official status along with and equal to Dutch, in the province of Fryslân. It is used in many domains of Frisian society, among which are education, legislation, and administration.

Although in the courts of law the Dutch language is still mainly used, in the province of Fryslân Frisians have the right to give evidence in their own language. Also, they can take the oath in Frisian in courts anywhere in the Netherlands.

Primary education in Fryslân was made bilingual in 1956, which means Frisian can be used as a teaching medium. In the same year, Frisian became an official school subject, having been introduced to primary education as an optional extra in 1937. It was not until 1980, that Frisian got the status of fully-fledged, i.e. required, subject in primary schools, and not until 1993, that it got the same position in secondary education.

In 1997, the province of Fryslân officially changed its name from the Dutch form Friesland to the Frisian Fryslân. So far 4 out of 31 municipalities (Tytsjerksteradiel, Boarnsterhim, Littenseradiel, and Ferwerderadiel) have changed their official geographical names from Dutch to Frisian.

Within ISO 639 West Frisian falls under the codes 'fy' and 'fry', which were assigned to the collective Frisian languages.

External links

* Frisian - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
* The Frisian Language - a page with some good links.

West Frisian language: Encyclopedia BETA

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