 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 ] Next Last |
| Frisian (Frysk) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Netherlands, Germany |
| Region: | Friesland |
| Total speakers: | between 450,000 and 730,000 |
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Germanic |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Netherlands |
| Regulated by: | -- |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | FRY |
| ISO 639-2 | FY |
| SIL | FRI |
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 dialectA dialect is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of arbitrary size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turs, 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 FrisianExternal link Frisian language.. 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 HeligolandWorld War I. Heligoland (in German, Helgoland and in North Frisian, Lun Halilonj is a small, German, triangular-shaped island approximately 2 km long, though a smaller island east of it is usually also included. The islands (population 1,650) are located 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 SaxonEast Frisian Low Saxon as a member of the Low Saxon language family is a dialect spoken in the Eastern Friesland peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony. It is used quite frequent in every day talk there. About half of the East Frisian population in the co (see below).
Most Frisian speakers live in the Netherlands, primarily in the province of Friesland ("Fryslân" in Frisian) where their number is about 440,000. 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 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".
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, while a dialect of Dutch known as Stadtfries ("City Frisian") has made massive gains within Friesland itself. 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.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|