Frisian - What is that actually?

Frisian is a West Germanic language group that is widespread on the southern North Sea coast. Frisian is classified as a North Sea Germanic language and is thus historically closely related to Low German ('Plattdeutsch') and especially to English.

Today, three Frisian language branches are distinguished:

  • West Frisian ('Frysk') is spoken by about 400,000 people in the Dutch province of Fryslân (Friesland) and is an official language there. There is a standardized West Frisian orthography which is used in administration, education, literature, and the media.
    (Caution: The term "West Frisian" is only used outside of the Netherlands to distinguish it from East and North Frisian. Within the Netherlands, "West Frisian" refers to a group of Hollandic Dutch dialects spoken in the Dutch province of North Holland).
     
  • East Frisian was wide-spread in the northwest of the German state of Lower Saxony and in the bordering Dutch province of Groningen until the late Middle Ages. This language has been nearly extinct for hundreds of years. To date, only in the Saterland region of Oldenburg has one dialect -  ("Seeltersk") with an estimated 2,000 speakers - survived. 
    (Caution: East Frisian (Ostfriesisch) is simultaneously the term for the Low German dialect of the East Frisians (Ostfriesen). This dialect does not linguistically belong to the Frisian language group, although some Frisian elements can be found in the language.) 
     
  • North Frisian includes the Frisian dialects that are native to northwestern Schleswig-Holstein. Several thousand people still speak one of the North Frisian dialects today. The name "Friisk" has become established as a cross-dialectal self-designation for the language.  

(Proto-)Old Frisian is considered the common "ancestor" of the three language branches. However, even evidence of Old Frisian from the period between the 13th and 16th centuries shows major dialect differences. Additionally, the three Frisian language branches have been geographically separated for centuries. It is therefore not surprising that the three Frisian languages ​​used today are no longer mutually intelligible.

North Frisian

Modern North Frisian dialects are one of the main research areas at the Institute for Frisian Studies and Minority Research at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. Current estimates suggest that North Frisian has between 4,000 and 10,000 speakers. The language is native to the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein and ist still spoken in the area north of Bredstedt to the Danish border, as well as on the Halligen, and the islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and Heligoland. There are also speakers in the diaspora. North Frisian is one of the smallest minority languages in Europe. 

In numerous kindergartens and schools in North Frisia, North Frisian varieties are taught as a foreign or native language, with courses available through secondary schools. Frisian can also be studied at the universities in Flensburg and Kiel.

North Frisian has a dialectal division that is likely unique in Europe and is spread over only a very small area: today we distinguish no fewer than nine dialects, some of which are very different, and others have already become extinct. The Eiderstedt peninsula, the area around the town of Husum, and the islands of Nordstrand and Pellworm all used to be Frisian-speaking. 

The main differences between the dialects go back to two different waves of (im)migration in the 8th and 11th centuries, which led to the division into "Island North Frisian" and "Mainland North Frisian" varieties. However, the uneven strength of contact between neighboring languages, Low German and South Jutish, may also be the cause of many differences between the dialects. Geographic conditions made contact between the North Frisians even more difficult and were favorable in the independent development of the individual dialects. Due to the lack of a cultural center of the North Frisians, there have never been any tendencies toward leveling or standardization of the dialects. For a long time, the North Frisians used Low German as a lingua franca, when their dialects were too different, that they could not understand each other. 

Protection and promotion of the language are regulated by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Schleswig-Holstein constitution, and the so-called Frisian Law.