What does the "Fries"/"Fris" etc. in Frisian mean? If it comes from a geographical name, what does the name mean? Considering that all of High German, Dutch and West Frisian use an "ie" vowel combination in their words for freeze, It seems probable that it somehow derives from the word "Freeze". Is that correct?
I've either read or heard that several Germanic languages besides German used to capitalise all common nouns. In Danish this practice was abolished in a spelling reform in the late 1940s. Can anybody tell me if this was ever practiced in Frisian and if so when was it abolished? — Hippietrail 16:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're wrong on this one, Old English certainly did not capitalise nouns, I don't think Dutch did either, nor Swedish, Noregian or Icelandic. It's one of those things the just happened to arise when German and Danish orthographys were divised, for no reason at all. All West Germanic "dialects" spoken within German, Austrian, and Swiss borders happen to be written this way (I'm not sure about Luxemburgish), and dialects in the same continiuum within Dutch and Belguim borders happen not to capitalise nouns. Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian) (talk)
Does anyone else find it HIGHLY improbable that Frisian is really in the top 20 for Google? Is that a separatist movement raising a profile by executing web searches? I can say anecdotally that in my lifetime I've read more about Frisians the cows than about Frisian the language, and I'm a medievalist (a time when Frisia actually existed as a tribal group and a place. St. Wilibrod, Apostle to the Frisians, is of mild interest to me.) --MichaelTinkler
In some places in this article, Frisian is called one language, but then in other places the "Frisian Languages" are mentioned. Which is correct?
Is it correct that Frisian used to have masculine/ feminine/ neuter but now has common/ neuter? Or is the truth more complicated like the case with Dutch? — Hippietrail 05:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
100110100 20:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, ehm.. if someone will ever read this.. can someone provide with a frisian pronunciation tabel, like those of other languages, i mean those table of consonants and vowels with IPA value, or better a new page like "frisian phonology", i mean there are many languages that have a page dedicated to their phonology, anyway for an exact pronunciation there are many sites, first for a very "table like" pronunciaton there is http://www.omniglot.com/writing/frisian.htm or others ( http://www.allezhop.de/frysk/staver_e.htm ) ..so
ken net! I'm sorry, maybe you can look at the Dutch or English wikipedia? type: Frisian or Fries. I do know that Frisian and English have many words somewhat pronounced the same as chair is in Frisian tsj..maybe you won't recognize the tsj but it's the same :P 81.69.203.77 20:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Despite the header "Frisian is a Germanic group of closely related languages," the article title implies one language. Are the languages (Frysk, Fräisk, Frasch, Freesk, etc.) really close enough to be considered a single language? — AjaxSmack 01:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a contradiction on the SIL web sites as to the language code for West Frisian (Frysk). The SIL ISO 639-3 website uses the code fry, while Ethnologue uses fri. This confusion is carried over to Wikipedia. This article has fri, while the West Frisian article has fry. - Parsa 00:31, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I received the following email from SIL:
If you consult the ISO/FDIS 639-3 website download page, you will see a link at the bottom of the page to a Retirements table. In it, you will see that [fri] is retired and changed to [fry]. The reason for this is that when the first draft code table was made for Part 3, the Part 2 code element [fry] was assumed to mean "Frisian" generally speaking. Subsequently, the Library of Congress (maintenance agency for Part 2) clarified its meaning as Western Frisian. In order to maintain Part 3 compatibility with Part 2, ISO/DIS 639-3 required the change from [fri] to [fry] for Western Frisian. Unfortunately, Ethnologue 15th edition had already been published, using [fri] for Western Frisian. So in this one instance at this time, Ethnologue and ISO/FDIS 639-3 are out of sync.
I made the change to [fry] in the table. - Parsa 06:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the statement that Frisian language is together with Dutch the two official languages of the Netherlands is exaggerated and imprecise. Check Mercator-legislation page on frisian, a specialised study center. It also contradicts with Netherlands#Languages. -- Michkalas 18:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It IS considered an official language in The Netherlands. That is all there is to it, how can one exaggerate that? 81.69.203.77 20:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
In the Netherlands, the official language is Dutch and English is the second language. Fryslân, however, is a bilingual region (province) in the Netherlands and it has been recognized as an offical language. 81.246.93.2 14:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I've re-inserted a reference to Scots in the introduction. I accept this isn't ideal in an article that has nothing to do with Scots, but my reason is that the contributor who removed the previous compromise wording - "some of the closest to English" - justified doing so by stating that "Scots is part of English". The problem is that this is not accepted fact, it's a hotly disputed assertion. It directly contradicts the hard-fought compromise wording in the introduction to the Scots language article, which gives equal weight to the competing claims that Scots is either a dialect of English, or a fully-fledged Germanic language in its own right. My wording of "with the arguable exception of Scots" is consistent with this. If somebody can think of a more elegant way of explaining Frisian's similarity to English without needing to refer to Scots at all, that would probably be preferable. But to baldly state that "Frisian languages are the closest living European languages to English" - as if there was no widely-held alternative point of view - is clearly misleading, and would not conform to NPOV. Sofia9 01:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
guid pynte, Scots an Inglis are gey close, but gin a leid hus its ain dialects, how can it be a dialect o anither yane, een whin lik Scots, its been surpressed thru the state educaition seestem fer monie decades an naibodie kens exactly how tae spell it noowadays ممتاز 23:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone know if there are any audio samples of a Frisian language available on the net?-- Blackfield 15:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes
http://www.allezhop.de/frysk/
ممتاز 19:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion the number of speakers shown at this page is far from accurate as the number of speakers is at least 100k higher. The article West Frisian language even implies a possibility of 700k speakers. It's very difficult to say how many speakers there are, but in my opinion 600k would be a more accurate estimation. Besides of that I think we should also make this article more congruent to other articles on this wikipedia. In my opinion it's wrong to say that the total number of speakers of all Frisian languages is 500k while the number of Western Lauwers Frisian is up to maybe even 700k speakers. On the Frisian Wikipedia there's also a little disambiguation but it's much smaller then on this Wikipedia. The numbers given by the Frisian Wikipedia is much more detailed and also shows us which people are speaking Frisian. According to the Frisian Wikipedia there are:
However I think the number of North-Frisian speakers is maybe a bit high I don't think it's worth arguing about that as it doesn't matter much for the total number of Frisian speakers as the West-Frisian group is much bigger. The data the Frisian Wikipedia provides is very details and also provides more information about which groups are speaking West-Frisian. I'll give a short summarising of it:
Frisian in the province of Frisia:
If we take those 74% of speakers from the inhabitants of the province of Friesland (630k) we come to a total number of people speaking Frisian in the province of Friesland of 466k people. 466k-347k=119k additional, non native speakers in the province of Friesland.
This number of non-native speakers is very discussable as it varies from very bad Frisian to excellent Frisian. It only rises the question if we should somewhere add this number to an article about Frisian, providing more information about non-native Frisian speakers. These numers are only there to illustrate that the number of Frisian speakers is much higher as 500k.
83.117.225.78 07:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC) (SK-luuut on various Wikipedia's)
I propose moving this Notable Frisians section to Frisians as it is more to do with the people than the language - does anyone object? GB 06:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Are you certain Danish would retain much intelligibility with Frisian? I know Danish has borrowed much vocabulary from Middle Low Saxon (rather closely related to Dutch) and that Friesian seems to have been quite affected by Dutch, but I doubt that would have a significant impact to cause notable intelligibility. (Although the lexical similarity between Danish and Dutch probably is rather high.) 惑乱 分からん 10:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Does someone have some recent information about the number of speakers? I've seen the 700,000 figure at ethnologue, but it was for the 1970s. I find 730,000 a bit optimistic, when there are only 440,000 speakers inside Friesland. Guaka 15:30, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I got the figures from ethnologue - so I don't have anything better. Secretlondon 15:34, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Something like 500,000 is more likely. See the estimates referred to in the Danish, Dutch, and German Wiki. By the way: their maps are decidedly better than the ones in this version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.84.223.134 ( talk) 14:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Just on a side note: The ISO-639-1 code 'fy' means Western Frisian and is not meant to cover the other Frisian languages. There are 3 ISO-639-2 codes for frisian languages: 'fry' fo Western, 'frs' for Eastern, and 'frr' for Northern Frisian, and ISO-639-3 knows 4 codes: 'fry', 'frs', 'frr', and 'stq'. The latter - as stated correctly - stands for Saterlandic Frisian (the only surviving variety of the Eastern Frisian language). Just don't know how to put these info into the lang box. Can anybody do this? 87.185.6.226 ( talk) 01:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, could someone maybe put in the article that Frisian is close to Middle English (...) mainly because they were one of the tribes that along with the Saxons and Angles invaded England; and with the Angles they put the basis for English? Don't know the years right now but still. I read in an article, don't remember it was this one or the Old Frisian...that the two languages were related. 81.69.203.77 20:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC) Mallerd
While Frisian is a "minority language" in Europe, I been wondering if there ever have been Frisian "minoritys" in coloys of the Western world. For example, the Europen colonists in both Canada and what is today the USA (Nice play Shakespeare, Racine, Goethe, etc/usw) arived speaking many different European languages, including French and German (I wonder how many and which dialects they arrived speaking), did any (significant group) arrive speaking Frisian or any other European minority language? Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian) (talk)
Does Kent count? ThW5 20:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
"This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingaevonic sound shift" seems very dubious. I can't see any mention of such a thing in Bremmer's Old Frisian book, and online the phrase "the Ingaevonic sound shift" seems to occur only in copies of this article. Has someone got confused by the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law and somehow misplaced it by 900 years? This statement needs to be sourced, corrected or deleted. This whole section seems rather muddled, in fact, and could do with an overhaul. -- Pfold ( talk) 00:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The "East Frisian" link in the Family Tree section points to East Frisian Low Saxon which is not a group of Frisian dialects, but a variety of Low Saxon. Since "East Frisian" is nowadays identical with Saterland Frisian language, which is already linked below, I'll just remove the link. Anorak2 ( talk) 09:15, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
The Frisian languages are a closely related group of Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 members of Frisian ethnic groups, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
They don't live on the sea. 82.32.235.134 ( talk) 19:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
I am mad. My editing to the infobox does not show up. What is going on here?
71.164.209.66 ( talk) 22:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Anonymous
The Dutch Low Saxon version of the comparative sentence currently translates as "The boy stroked the girl on the chin and gave her a smooch," with no reference to the cheek. Is there anyone out there who knows Dutch Low Saxon well enough to fix the sentence so that it more directly corresponds to the other languages?
BeIsKr ( talk) 10:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
In the German sentence I (as a native speaker) would use "Wange" instead of "Backe". It's at least as valid and commonly used and shows more similarity with other languages. Furthermore the English sentence uses plural ("cheeks") while the German version is singular (plural would be "Backen"/"Wangen"). Not speaking any of the other languages I can't say which is intended.
Of course it's "Wange". Every German with sense of speech will tell you that the word "Backe" means nothing more than a buttock. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.103.203.125 ( talk) 07:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
85.178.224.2 ( talk) 18:21, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
As a native German speaker to whom Wange is like a foreign word, I must object. Backe is regionally both cheek and buttock with the latter usually being used with a qualifier (e.g. Arschbacke) unless the exact meaning is clear from context. -- Purodha Blissenbach ( talk) 15:19, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The main article mentions that Frisian is "strikingly similar" to Northumbrian varieties of English, yet the comparative sentence is rendered only in Lancashire dialect and Scots. Can someone take a stab at rendering it in Geordie, or some other variety of Northumbrian English?
Mesnenor (
talk) 20:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it true that this language is closer to English than any other currently spoken language? Just curious... Tuf-Kat 07:31, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the sentence in the article explaining this is itself in very poor English. Should be "closest". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.122.14 ( talk) 14:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes - if you count Scots as a variety of English and ignore English-based creoles. It's not that obvious when you look at modern English and Frisian together, because they've been evolving seperately for over a millennium, and English has been heavily inflenced by French while Frisian has been influenced by Dutch and German. Nevertheless, when you compare the same word in English, Frisian, Dutch and German, it is clear that English and Frisian resemble each other more than the other two; e.g. Eng. cheese, Fr. tsiis, Du. kaas and Germ. Käse or Eng. key, Fr. kaai, Du. sleutel and Germ. Schlüssel. Hedgehog 10:21, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
My father tells me that, as a British Army officer in the liberation of Frisia in 1945, he was able to make himself understood in (and understand) Frisian simply by speaking slowly in English. He couldn't do that anywhere else! Has anyone tried more recently?
Nowadays all Dutch children are being taught English starting at age 10, and that's not counting the influence of English television series. So I think you won't have a hard time making yourself understood :D. In the old days kids were also taught French and German that early, which is the reason the Dutch still have a reputation of knowing many foreign languages ;).
It is somewhat politically charged to discount Scots when talking about the Germanic languages most similar to English, and also contradicts content elsewhere on Wikipedia. As I write this, the last sentence of the introduction is Frisian is the living language most closely related to the English language family. I think the phrasing of 'English language family' tempers the controversy, but the link to the English language article counters this. Yet the similarity to English is surely vital in introducing the topic to readers of the English Wikipedia. I am proposing an alternative phrasing Modern Frisian, like Scots, is closely related to the modern English language. What do you think? By the way - for further reading see English language#Classification_and_related_languages. User:anonymous
It's true that there are common words in Frisian and English but saying that an English speaking person with knowledge of Dutch or Afrikaans can understand Frisian is not true. Native Dutch speakers don't understand Frisian (a part from a few words), this would be no better for an English speaking person. Similarities can be found in many languages (Dutch and German for example) but it takes a whole lot more to understand a language. 81.246.93.2 14:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Which variety is closest to English, West, East, or North Frisian? — Wiki Wikardo 00:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Why there is no such way for South Frisian language — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.185.9.3 ( talk) 01:43, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
It is not a perfect pattern — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.185.9.3 ( talk) 02:00, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
The section titled "compounding" is complete gibberish. Maybe this makes sense to some linguists, but it is completely unreadable for anyone else. There are too many technical terms, which aren't even cross-linked to explain them, and the section doesn't contain a single example of what it is about. Frankly, this looks more like some linguist's pet project than a serious part of the article. (There is no such section in the Dutch and Frisian language versions of this article.) If you believe this section is meaningful, then please rewrite it in English with less jargon, and provide examples, because as it stands this whole section may as well be removed. Note that equally incomprehensible remarks about homophony are found in the "speakers" section. 2602:306:CEAE:E60:F954:3DF4:95CF:EAF9 ( talk) 11:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Why is the Dutch word Wangen used over the Dutch word Kaak? Doesn't kaak come closer to the word cheeks, e.g. as the article mentions the difference between English ch and the k in Dutch and for the ee which is commonly aa in Dutch.
"Dutch: De jongen aaide/streek het meisje langs haar kin en kuste/zoende haar op de kaak."
"English: The boy stroked the girl around the chin and kissed her on the cheeks."
I believe the comparisons could even be translated closer :)
--
3liot (
talk) 23:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
I noticed this somewhat curious sources listed:
It may be these really are valid sources, but if so, I hope something can be done to make them easier to judge from their description.
It's warm, though, and I'm n ot in the mood to investigate any more after I found I couldn't enter
That one, for as far as I can read it, apparently describes a limited situation sixty years ago while being used as a source for a blanket statement that's supposed to be valid today. Mysha ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:03, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Ok I don't know who put it there, but i can assure you, there isn't anyone here in Groningen who speaks Frisian. Maybe Frisians who moved to Groningen do, but no real 'Groninger' ever speaks Frisian.
Isnt there supposed to be a mixture between Frisian and Dutch in Groningen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gronings ممتاز 02:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I have attempted to clarify the bit about Groningen, as the language situation there seems to be related to the subject of Frisian, even though the language there is not pure Frisian. I think it would be wrong to completely remove mention of the region from the article. If anyone could phrase the bit I've added better, please do so. ممتاز 03:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't speak Dutch, but I have a question on the translation of the sentence: "The boy stroked the girl [...]" found in the article. First, shouldn't the past tense form of "streken" be "streekde" instead of "streek" ? Second, since "het meisje" is a neuter noun, shouldn't the pronoun referring to it be "het" (cf. "es" in the German translation), instead of "haar" ? Thank you in advance for your reply. 189.69.53.95 ( talk) 10:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
This article needs to be cleared of Scandinavian references. If you look at the language samples, there is no similarity at all in any way, but similarity between the others in in most cases evident. Will wait for any objections to be voiced on the issue. SNTOI ( talk) 12:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
<ref>
and not with an asterisk. I removed Swedish and Norwegian because they are irrelevant to this article. Danish is relevant only because Frisian is spoken in Denmark.
—DIYeditor (
talk) 01:00, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
efn}}
(explanatory footnote) template with a {{
notelist}}
in a Notes section added below. Also it is
WP:OR (original research) to make a statement that Frisian is or isn't related to Danish, that requires a
source. So I think we could either delete the line of Danish entirely or add a sourced footnote that Frisian is not closely related to Danish and that the sample is offered only because of geographic proximity. I think I would prefer the latter, personally.
—DIYeditor (
talk) 00:27, 16 December 2017 (UTC)Hi, I am a known troll. At least, that's what I just read in the comment from the person reverting my edit from the right 2005 code for Eastern Frisian, frs, back to the wrong code, stq.
I am also the person who in 2004/2005 documented and requested the ISO 639-2 code change for Western Frisian, Northern Frisian, and Eastern Frisian. This change was documented in the document now at [1], which our pages currently refers to as note 10. The decision even included my conclusion that the code fry had effectively been in use as a code for Western Frisian only, a comment that in turn was included in our page.
You can find the resulting change described at Frisian_languages#Status. After the first sentence, which I'll mention below, it continues about the change to the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 codes. This change is covered on our page since 14 March 2006. This includes the unfortunate wording "The new ISO 639 code frs is used for the Saterland Frisian language also known as Eastern Frisian", which is not the complete truth. Saterland Frisian is the last still spoken dialect of Eastern Frisian. However, documents in other dialects exist as well, hence the two can not be used interchangeably. The ISO 639-2 code frs is for the entire Eastern Frisian language. Therefore, the ISO 639-2 change we're discussing on the page did indeed assign frs to Saterland Frisian, but not exclusively to that dialect. It's also a weakness to write "ISO 639", rather than "ISO 639-2", as is the tense used, but in the context these should not cause problems.
On 23 November 2007, that description was changed to say, according to the comment, that "stq is now used for Saterland Frisian". The change mostly adds information about the 2005 change, and documents it with a document now at [2]. The editor must therefore have seen in that very document that the code as given for Eastern Frisian is frs. Yet, the main part is apparently to claim that the code change assigned stq to Saterland Frisian language/Eastern Frisian.
The claim itself has some validity, caused by the curious management of ISO 639, where different tables are managed by different authorities. Thus, the ISO 639-3 codes, not managed by the same people as the ISO 639-2 codes, now includes a code stq for Saterland Frisian: [3]. This appears to be based on an error in Ethnologue, but however this will get resolved, such a code currently indeed exists. Anyone with the time and the inclination to research this, could probably add a paragraph about the assignment of this code. It is, however, an ISO 639-3 code; it was not assigned as the new ISO 639-2 in the change we describe in the article. Until someone reworks the article, the code for (Saterland Frisian language/)Eastern Frisian that we describe, is the code from the ISO 639-2 change we describe: frs.
I have no idea why someone lied about that while inserting a source that shows him wrong. But then, I am a known troll. Mysha ( talk)
What does the "Fries"/"Fris" etc. in Frisian mean? If it comes from a geographical name, what does the name mean? Considering that all of High German, Dutch and West Frisian use an "ie" vowel combination in their words for freeze, It seems probable that it somehow derives from the word "Freeze". Is that correct?
I've either read or heard that several Germanic languages besides German used to capitalise all common nouns. In Danish this practice was abolished in a spelling reform in the late 1940s. Can anybody tell me if this was ever practiced in Frisian and if so when was it abolished? — Hippietrail 16:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're wrong on this one, Old English certainly did not capitalise nouns, I don't think Dutch did either, nor Swedish, Noregian or Icelandic. It's one of those things the just happened to arise when German and Danish orthographys were divised, for no reason at all. All West Germanic "dialects" spoken within German, Austrian, and Swiss borders happen to be written this way (I'm not sure about Luxemburgish), and dialects in the same continiuum within Dutch and Belguim borders happen not to capitalise nouns. Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian) (talk)
Does anyone else find it HIGHLY improbable that Frisian is really in the top 20 for Google? Is that a separatist movement raising a profile by executing web searches? I can say anecdotally that in my lifetime I've read more about Frisians the cows than about Frisian the language, and I'm a medievalist (a time when Frisia actually existed as a tribal group and a place. St. Wilibrod, Apostle to the Frisians, is of mild interest to me.) --MichaelTinkler
In some places in this article, Frisian is called one language, but then in other places the "Frisian Languages" are mentioned. Which is correct?
Is it correct that Frisian used to have masculine/ feminine/ neuter but now has common/ neuter? Or is the truth more complicated like the case with Dutch? — Hippietrail 05:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
100110100 20:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, ehm.. if someone will ever read this.. can someone provide with a frisian pronunciation tabel, like those of other languages, i mean those table of consonants and vowels with IPA value, or better a new page like "frisian phonology", i mean there are many languages that have a page dedicated to their phonology, anyway for an exact pronunciation there are many sites, first for a very "table like" pronunciaton there is http://www.omniglot.com/writing/frisian.htm or others ( http://www.allezhop.de/frysk/staver_e.htm ) ..so
ken net! I'm sorry, maybe you can look at the Dutch or English wikipedia? type: Frisian or Fries. I do know that Frisian and English have many words somewhat pronounced the same as chair is in Frisian tsj..maybe you won't recognize the tsj but it's the same :P 81.69.203.77 20:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Despite the header "Frisian is a Germanic group of closely related languages," the article title implies one language. Are the languages (Frysk, Fräisk, Frasch, Freesk, etc.) really close enough to be considered a single language? — AjaxSmack 01:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a contradiction on the SIL web sites as to the language code for West Frisian (Frysk). The SIL ISO 639-3 website uses the code fry, while Ethnologue uses fri. This confusion is carried over to Wikipedia. This article has fri, while the West Frisian article has fry. - Parsa 00:31, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I received the following email from SIL:
If you consult the ISO/FDIS 639-3 website download page, you will see a link at the bottom of the page to a Retirements table. In it, you will see that [fri] is retired and changed to [fry]. The reason for this is that when the first draft code table was made for Part 3, the Part 2 code element [fry] was assumed to mean "Frisian" generally speaking. Subsequently, the Library of Congress (maintenance agency for Part 2) clarified its meaning as Western Frisian. In order to maintain Part 3 compatibility with Part 2, ISO/DIS 639-3 required the change from [fri] to [fry] for Western Frisian. Unfortunately, Ethnologue 15th edition had already been published, using [fri] for Western Frisian. So in this one instance at this time, Ethnologue and ISO/FDIS 639-3 are out of sync.
I made the change to [fry] in the table. - Parsa 06:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the statement that Frisian language is together with Dutch the two official languages of the Netherlands is exaggerated and imprecise. Check Mercator-legislation page on frisian, a specialised study center. It also contradicts with Netherlands#Languages. -- Michkalas 18:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It IS considered an official language in The Netherlands. That is all there is to it, how can one exaggerate that? 81.69.203.77 20:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
In the Netherlands, the official language is Dutch and English is the second language. Fryslân, however, is a bilingual region (province) in the Netherlands and it has been recognized as an offical language. 81.246.93.2 14:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I've re-inserted a reference to Scots in the introduction. I accept this isn't ideal in an article that has nothing to do with Scots, but my reason is that the contributor who removed the previous compromise wording - "some of the closest to English" - justified doing so by stating that "Scots is part of English". The problem is that this is not accepted fact, it's a hotly disputed assertion. It directly contradicts the hard-fought compromise wording in the introduction to the Scots language article, which gives equal weight to the competing claims that Scots is either a dialect of English, or a fully-fledged Germanic language in its own right. My wording of "with the arguable exception of Scots" is consistent with this. If somebody can think of a more elegant way of explaining Frisian's similarity to English without needing to refer to Scots at all, that would probably be preferable. But to baldly state that "Frisian languages are the closest living European languages to English" - as if there was no widely-held alternative point of view - is clearly misleading, and would not conform to NPOV. Sofia9 01:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
guid pynte, Scots an Inglis are gey close, but gin a leid hus its ain dialects, how can it be a dialect o anither yane, een whin lik Scots, its been surpressed thru the state educaition seestem fer monie decades an naibodie kens exactly how tae spell it noowadays ممتاز 23:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone know if there are any audio samples of a Frisian language available on the net?-- Blackfield 15:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes
http://www.allezhop.de/frysk/
ممتاز 19:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion the number of speakers shown at this page is far from accurate as the number of speakers is at least 100k higher. The article West Frisian language even implies a possibility of 700k speakers. It's very difficult to say how many speakers there are, but in my opinion 600k would be a more accurate estimation. Besides of that I think we should also make this article more congruent to other articles on this wikipedia. In my opinion it's wrong to say that the total number of speakers of all Frisian languages is 500k while the number of Western Lauwers Frisian is up to maybe even 700k speakers. On the Frisian Wikipedia there's also a little disambiguation but it's much smaller then on this Wikipedia. The numbers given by the Frisian Wikipedia is much more detailed and also shows us which people are speaking Frisian. According to the Frisian Wikipedia there are:
However I think the number of North-Frisian speakers is maybe a bit high I don't think it's worth arguing about that as it doesn't matter much for the total number of Frisian speakers as the West-Frisian group is much bigger. The data the Frisian Wikipedia provides is very details and also provides more information about which groups are speaking West-Frisian. I'll give a short summarising of it:
Frisian in the province of Frisia:
If we take those 74% of speakers from the inhabitants of the province of Friesland (630k) we come to a total number of people speaking Frisian in the province of Friesland of 466k people. 466k-347k=119k additional, non native speakers in the province of Friesland.
This number of non-native speakers is very discussable as it varies from very bad Frisian to excellent Frisian. It only rises the question if we should somewhere add this number to an article about Frisian, providing more information about non-native Frisian speakers. These numers are only there to illustrate that the number of Frisian speakers is much higher as 500k.
83.117.225.78 07:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC) (SK-luuut on various Wikipedia's)
I propose moving this Notable Frisians section to Frisians as it is more to do with the people than the language - does anyone object? GB 06:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Are you certain Danish would retain much intelligibility with Frisian? I know Danish has borrowed much vocabulary from Middle Low Saxon (rather closely related to Dutch) and that Friesian seems to have been quite affected by Dutch, but I doubt that would have a significant impact to cause notable intelligibility. (Although the lexical similarity between Danish and Dutch probably is rather high.) 惑乱 分からん 10:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Does someone have some recent information about the number of speakers? I've seen the 700,000 figure at ethnologue, but it was for the 1970s. I find 730,000 a bit optimistic, when there are only 440,000 speakers inside Friesland. Guaka 15:30, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I got the figures from ethnologue - so I don't have anything better. Secretlondon 15:34, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Something like 500,000 is more likely. See the estimates referred to in the Danish, Dutch, and German Wiki. By the way: their maps are decidedly better than the ones in this version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.84.223.134 ( talk) 14:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Just on a side note: The ISO-639-1 code 'fy' means Western Frisian and is not meant to cover the other Frisian languages. There are 3 ISO-639-2 codes for frisian languages: 'fry' fo Western, 'frs' for Eastern, and 'frr' for Northern Frisian, and ISO-639-3 knows 4 codes: 'fry', 'frs', 'frr', and 'stq'. The latter - as stated correctly - stands for Saterlandic Frisian (the only surviving variety of the Eastern Frisian language). Just don't know how to put these info into the lang box. Can anybody do this? 87.185.6.226 ( talk) 01:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, could someone maybe put in the article that Frisian is close to Middle English (...) mainly because they were one of the tribes that along with the Saxons and Angles invaded England; and with the Angles they put the basis for English? Don't know the years right now but still. I read in an article, don't remember it was this one or the Old Frisian...that the two languages were related. 81.69.203.77 20:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC) Mallerd
While Frisian is a "minority language" in Europe, I been wondering if there ever have been Frisian "minoritys" in coloys of the Western world. For example, the Europen colonists in both Canada and what is today the USA (Nice play Shakespeare, Racine, Goethe, etc/usw) arived speaking many different European languages, including French and German (I wonder how many and which dialects they arrived speaking), did any (significant group) arrive speaking Frisian or any other European minority language? Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian) (talk)
Does Kent count? ThW5 20:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
"This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingaevonic sound shift" seems very dubious. I can't see any mention of such a thing in Bremmer's Old Frisian book, and online the phrase "the Ingaevonic sound shift" seems to occur only in copies of this article. Has someone got confused by the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law and somehow misplaced it by 900 years? This statement needs to be sourced, corrected or deleted. This whole section seems rather muddled, in fact, and could do with an overhaul. -- Pfold ( talk) 00:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The "East Frisian" link in the Family Tree section points to East Frisian Low Saxon which is not a group of Frisian dialects, but a variety of Low Saxon. Since "East Frisian" is nowadays identical with Saterland Frisian language, which is already linked below, I'll just remove the link. Anorak2 ( talk) 09:15, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
The Frisian languages are a closely related group of Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 members of Frisian ethnic groups, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
They don't live on the sea. 82.32.235.134 ( talk) 19:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
I am mad. My editing to the infobox does not show up. What is going on here?
71.164.209.66 ( talk) 22:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Anonymous
The Dutch Low Saxon version of the comparative sentence currently translates as "The boy stroked the girl on the chin and gave her a smooch," with no reference to the cheek. Is there anyone out there who knows Dutch Low Saxon well enough to fix the sentence so that it more directly corresponds to the other languages?
BeIsKr ( talk) 10:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
In the German sentence I (as a native speaker) would use "Wange" instead of "Backe". It's at least as valid and commonly used and shows more similarity with other languages. Furthermore the English sentence uses plural ("cheeks") while the German version is singular (plural would be "Backen"/"Wangen"). Not speaking any of the other languages I can't say which is intended.
Of course it's "Wange". Every German with sense of speech will tell you that the word "Backe" means nothing more than a buttock. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.103.203.125 ( talk) 07:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
85.178.224.2 ( talk) 18:21, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
As a native German speaker to whom Wange is like a foreign word, I must object. Backe is regionally both cheek and buttock with the latter usually being used with a qualifier (e.g. Arschbacke) unless the exact meaning is clear from context. -- Purodha Blissenbach ( talk) 15:19, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The main article mentions that Frisian is "strikingly similar" to Northumbrian varieties of English, yet the comparative sentence is rendered only in Lancashire dialect and Scots. Can someone take a stab at rendering it in Geordie, or some other variety of Northumbrian English?
Mesnenor (
talk) 20:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it true that this language is closer to English than any other currently spoken language? Just curious... Tuf-Kat 07:31, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the sentence in the article explaining this is itself in very poor English. Should be "closest". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.122.14 ( talk) 14:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes - if you count Scots as a variety of English and ignore English-based creoles. It's not that obvious when you look at modern English and Frisian together, because they've been evolving seperately for over a millennium, and English has been heavily inflenced by French while Frisian has been influenced by Dutch and German. Nevertheless, when you compare the same word in English, Frisian, Dutch and German, it is clear that English and Frisian resemble each other more than the other two; e.g. Eng. cheese, Fr. tsiis, Du. kaas and Germ. Käse or Eng. key, Fr. kaai, Du. sleutel and Germ. Schlüssel. Hedgehog 10:21, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
My father tells me that, as a British Army officer in the liberation of Frisia in 1945, he was able to make himself understood in (and understand) Frisian simply by speaking slowly in English. He couldn't do that anywhere else! Has anyone tried more recently?
Nowadays all Dutch children are being taught English starting at age 10, and that's not counting the influence of English television series. So I think you won't have a hard time making yourself understood :D. In the old days kids were also taught French and German that early, which is the reason the Dutch still have a reputation of knowing many foreign languages ;).
It is somewhat politically charged to discount Scots when talking about the Germanic languages most similar to English, and also contradicts content elsewhere on Wikipedia. As I write this, the last sentence of the introduction is Frisian is the living language most closely related to the English language family. I think the phrasing of 'English language family' tempers the controversy, but the link to the English language article counters this. Yet the similarity to English is surely vital in introducing the topic to readers of the English Wikipedia. I am proposing an alternative phrasing Modern Frisian, like Scots, is closely related to the modern English language. What do you think? By the way - for further reading see English language#Classification_and_related_languages. User:anonymous
It's true that there are common words in Frisian and English but saying that an English speaking person with knowledge of Dutch or Afrikaans can understand Frisian is not true. Native Dutch speakers don't understand Frisian (a part from a few words), this would be no better for an English speaking person. Similarities can be found in many languages (Dutch and German for example) but it takes a whole lot more to understand a language. 81.246.93.2 14:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Which variety is closest to English, West, East, or North Frisian? — Wiki Wikardo 00:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Why there is no such way for South Frisian language — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.185.9.3 ( talk) 01:43, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
It is not a perfect pattern — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.185.9.3 ( talk) 02:00, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
The section titled "compounding" is complete gibberish. Maybe this makes sense to some linguists, but it is completely unreadable for anyone else. There are too many technical terms, which aren't even cross-linked to explain them, and the section doesn't contain a single example of what it is about. Frankly, this looks more like some linguist's pet project than a serious part of the article. (There is no such section in the Dutch and Frisian language versions of this article.) If you believe this section is meaningful, then please rewrite it in English with less jargon, and provide examples, because as it stands this whole section may as well be removed. Note that equally incomprehensible remarks about homophony are found in the "speakers" section. 2602:306:CEAE:E60:F954:3DF4:95CF:EAF9 ( talk) 11:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Why is the Dutch word Wangen used over the Dutch word Kaak? Doesn't kaak come closer to the word cheeks, e.g. as the article mentions the difference between English ch and the k in Dutch and for the ee which is commonly aa in Dutch.
"Dutch: De jongen aaide/streek het meisje langs haar kin en kuste/zoende haar op de kaak."
"English: The boy stroked the girl around the chin and kissed her on the cheeks."
I believe the comparisons could even be translated closer :)
--
3liot (
talk) 23:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
I noticed this somewhat curious sources listed:
It may be these really are valid sources, but if so, I hope something can be done to make them easier to judge from their description.
It's warm, though, and I'm n ot in the mood to investigate any more after I found I couldn't enter
That one, for as far as I can read it, apparently describes a limited situation sixty years ago while being used as a source for a blanket statement that's supposed to be valid today. Mysha ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:03, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Ok I don't know who put it there, but i can assure you, there isn't anyone here in Groningen who speaks Frisian. Maybe Frisians who moved to Groningen do, but no real 'Groninger' ever speaks Frisian.
Isnt there supposed to be a mixture between Frisian and Dutch in Groningen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gronings ممتاز 02:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I have attempted to clarify the bit about Groningen, as the language situation there seems to be related to the subject of Frisian, even though the language there is not pure Frisian. I think it would be wrong to completely remove mention of the region from the article. If anyone could phrase the bit I've added better, please do so. ممتاز 03:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't speak Dutch, but I have a question on the translation of the sentence: "The boy stroked the girl [...]" found in the article. First, shouldn't the past tense form of "streken" be "streekde" instead of "streek" ? Second, since "het meisje" is a neuter noun, shouldn't the pronoun referring to it be "het" (cf. "es" in the German translation), instead of "haar" ? Thank you in advance for your reply. 189.69.53.95 ( talk) 10:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
This article needs to be cleared of Scandinavian references. If you look at the language samples, there is no similarity at all in any way, but similarity between the others in in most cases evident. Will wait for any objections to be voiced on the issue. SNTOI ( talk) 12:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
<ref>
and not with an asterisk. I removed Swedish and Norwegian because they are irrelevant to this article. Danish is relevant only because Frisian is spoken in Denmark.
—DIYeditor (
talk) 01:00, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
efn}}
(explanatory footnote) template with a {{
notelist}}
in a Notes section added below. Also it is
WP:OR (original research) to make a statement that Frisian is or isn't related to Danish, that requires a
source. So I think we could either delete the line of Danish entirely or add a sourced footnote that Frisian is not closely related to Danish and that the sample is offered only because of geographic proximity. I think I would prefer the latter, personally.
—DIYeditor (
talk) 00:27, 16 December 2017 (UTC)Hi, I am a known troll. At least, that's what I just read in the comment from the person reverting my edit from the right 2005 code for Eastern Frisian, frs, back to the wrong code, stq.
I am also the person who in 2004/2005 documented and requested the ISO 639-2 code change for Western Frisian, Northern Frisian, and Eastern Frisian. This change was documented in the document now at [1], which our pages currently refers to as note 10. The decision even included my conclusion that the code fry had effectively been in use as a code for Western Frisian only, a comment that in turn was included in our page.
You can find the resulting change described at Frisian_languages#Status. After the first sentence, which I'll mention below, it continues about the change to the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 codes. This change is covered on our page since 14 March 2006. This includes the unfortunate wording "The new ISO 639 code frs is used for the Saterland Frisian language also known as Eastern Frisian", which is not the complete truth. Saterland Frisian is the last still spoken dialect of Eastern Frisian. However, documents in other dialects exist as well, hence the two can not be used interchangeably. The ISO 639-2 code frs is for the entire Eastern Frisian language. Therefore, the ISO 639-2 change we're discussing on the page did indeed assign frs to Saterland Frisian, but not exclusively to that dialect. It's also a weakness to write "ISO 639", rather than "ISO 639-2", as is the tense used, but in the context these should not cause problems.
On 23 November 2007, that description was changed to say, according to the comment, that "stq is now used for Saterland Frisian". The change mostly adds information about the 2005 change, and documents it with a document now at [2]. The editor must therefore have seen in that very document that the code as given for Eastern Frisian is frs. Yet, the main part is apparently to claim that the code change assigned stq to Saterland Frisian language/Eastern Frisian.
The claim itself has some validity, caused by the curious management of ISO 639, where different tables are managed by different authorities. Thus, the ISO 639-3 codes, not managed by the same people as the ISO 639-2 codes, now includes a code stq for Saterland Frisian: [3]. This appears to be based on an error in Ethnologue, but however this will get resolved, such a code currently indeed exists. Anyone with the time and the inclination to research this, could probably add a paragraph about the assignment of this code. It is, however, an ISO 639-3 code; it was not assigned as the new ISO 639-2 in the change we describe in the article. Until someone reworks the article, the code for (Saterland Frisian language/)Eastern Frisian that we describe, is the code from the ISO 639-2 change we describe: frs.
I have no idea why someone lied about that while inserting a source that shows him wrong. But then, I am a known troll. Mysha ( talk)