11.3. Frisian

The Frisian Islands are from 3 to 20 miles off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany. They extend to the southern part of the Danish peninsula of Jutland from the Waddenzee. The islands are separated from the mainland by shallows.

As we can judge from the earliest testimonies, the territory inhabited by the Frisians stretched from the Rhine delta to the Ems river. While describing Germania to the west, Tacitus noted, “The country of Frisia is divided into two; called the greater and lesser, according to the measure of their strength. Both nations stretch along the Rhine, quite to the ocean; and surround vast lakes such as once have borne Roman fleets. We have moreover even ventured out from thence into the ocean, and upon its coast common fame has reported the pillars of Hercules to be still standing: whether it be that Hercules ever visited these parts, or that to his renowned name we are wont to ascribe whatever is grand and glorious everywhere. Neither did Drusus who made the attempt, want boldness to pursue it: but the roughness of the ocean withstood him, nor would suffer discoveries to be made about itself, no more than about Hercules.”

Procopius suggested that there were contingents of the Frisians among the tribes that invaded Britain in the 5^th century. Also, there seem to have been commercial contacts between Kentish traders and Frisians. Further evidence is provided by post-conquest Frisian placenames on the territory of the British Isles.

Once Frisian was the predominant language along the coast of the North Sea and on the coast islands from the Scheldt to the Ems rivers. Unlike other Germanic tribes, the Frisians remained in their old haunts at the time of the Great migrations of the peoples. They began to colonize the North Frisian Islands and the adjusting coastal strip as late as the 9^th century.

Originally a Low dialect, Frisian has been supplanted by Dutch and Plattdeutsch (Low German) since the 16^th century, when parts of the Frisian territory were incorporated into the Netherlands.

Today the West Frisian Islands (Texel, Terschelling, Vlieland and some others) belong to the Netherlands.

The East Frisian islands (among them Borkum, Baltrum, Langeoog, Spiekeroog) are part of Germany.

The North Frisian Islands (Sylt, Nordstrand, Pellworn, Føhr, Helgoland), with the exception of the Danish islands of Fanø and Rømø, are also part of the German territory. Due to constant erosion, the estimated area of the North Frisian Islands had shrunk to 105sq miles by 1850 (almost ten times smaller in comparison with the 13^th century).

Frisian along with E, belongs to the Anglo-Friasian division of West Germanic. Although Frisian was under the influence of the surrounding north-west Germanic dialects, it is traditionally viewed to be closer to Anglo-Saxon than any other language in the West Germanic group. Although this point of view has not been contested, the absence of phonetic or grammatical peculiarities that are found only in Frisian and Anglo-Saxon, but nowhere else in the West Germanic group, did not escape the scholars.

In spite of the fact that the Frisians are mentioned in the Frankish writings as early as the 6^th century, the oldest Frisian writings are registered many centuries later. The oldest Frisian writings originate from the 13^th century. Among them are collections of laws, legal documents, old Germanic sagas, and a collection of verses. The language of these documents up to 1400 is labelled Old Frisian, though chronologically the term Middle Frisian would be more suggestive. The history of Frisian falls into Old Frisian (further subdivided into two slightly divergent dialects, East Frisian and West Frisian, with the river Lauwers as their natural boundary), Middle Frisian (1400-1600) and Modern Frisian (West Frisian, North Frisian, and East Frisian).

Modern West Frisian (300,000 speakers) is confined to the province of Friesland. In its pure form it is preserved in rural areas. In towns Town-Frisian, which is actually half-Dutch and half-Frisian, is commonly used. Since the first half of the 16^th century Frisian has been extricated from the language of the law and administration by Dutch, an official language of Friesland. The final establishment of the House of Burgundy in 1524 led to the migration of Dutch-speaking officials within a short period of time. The newcomers were influential enough to modify the language, so as Town-Frisian came into being rapidly, widely open to Dutch penetration.

New West Frisian literature dates from the 17^th century. The first notable work in that language was a comic dialogue Wouter en Tialle (“Wouter and Tialle”, 1609).

Modern West Frisian literature begins with Gysbert Japiks (1603-1666), who was the writer of distinction. Japiks followed a century later by Jan Althuysen (1715-63).

At the end of the 18^th century interest in Frisian diminished (the language of the church and administration being Dutch). The modern literary renaissance began in the twenties of the 19^th century. Frisian intellectuals wanted tjeir native language to restore its former position as the ordinary medium for all purposes. In 1844 the Society for the Frisian language and literature was founded. The problem was that the people got used to using Dutch as a literary and official medium. The orthodox congregations had prejudices against Frisian as a fit language for calling upon the name of God. Only in 1943 a Frisian version of the whole Bible appeared. It was, no doubt, one of the substantial achievements of the Frisian movement.

Besides, Frisian has won its struggle for being the medium of instruction at a primary school. Also, since the war, it has been usual to post up village street names in Frisian; sometimes, place names are given in both Frisian and Dutch, cf. Ljouwert-Leeuwarden.

Still, modern West Frisian has preserved many marks of the Dutch influence. As far as possible, unnecessary Hollandisms are replaced by genuine Frisian expressions. This movement is part of anti-Dutch purism: whenever there is a choice, a Frisian form is given preference. For instance, for the verb “to have” one can choose among a number of dialectal forms (hebbe, habbe, hawwe, hewwe), the latter form hewwe adopted as a literary standard only because it was the one most unlike Dutch hebben.

As a literary language, West Frisian is based on the spoken dialects.

West Frisian has a rather complicated vowel system with a large number of diphthongs and some triphthongs, which is not fixed in the present standard of orthography. Besides, the plosives p, t, k are not aspirated, like in Dutch.

There have been some morphological changes. The subjunctive has disappeared, the imperative has one form, the gerund construction is treated as a second infinitive.

The fate of modern East Frisian is doubtful (1,000 speakers). It survived on the small island of Wangeroog, where it became extinct in the twenties of the 20^th century, and in New-Wangeroog, where the last speakers died in the thirties of the 20^th century. The traditional East Frisian area was in a remote part of Saterland.

Yet, this enclave of East Frisian speech has not entirely succumbed to the surrounding German. The few texts in East Frisian, the last relics of this group, are strongly Germanised, although specific East Frisian features can be noted by a keen observer.

Unlike West Frisian with its Hollandisms and East Frisian in its Germanised version, North Frisian was influenced by Danish.

At first North Frisian was colonised from East Frisia. Then North Frisian came into contact with Danish in the north and in the east. Subsequently, North Frisians came under Danish rule, having inherited Danicisms: various horrowings, loan translations, syntactical imitations, even phonetic habits, markers of the Danish element, penetrated into all North Frisian dialects. Because of its danicisms, North Frisian differs much from both West Frisian and East Frisian. Accordingly, as soon as the Danish language was gradually expelled in South Sleswig by Low German, North Frisian became exposed to Low German influence. Finally, standard German substituted North Frisian at the schools and as a language of mass media. As a result, North Frisian has many borrowings either from Low German or the High German Standard. To sum up, North Frisian is utterly dependent on German: even if words are Frisian, their spirit is often German.

The Frisian movement in North Frisia has always been weaker than in the West. Unlike West Frisian, North Frisian has no literary standard. North Frisian lives on only in its dialects. Most of what little comes out is the dialect West Moring writing, i.e. the speech of the Niebüll area.

North Frisian has no official recognition, it is not encouraged, and its frontiers are rapidly receding. The last expected strongholds of North Frisian are the island of Föht and the mainland strip south of Niebüll. These are rural areas where the child population is still mostly Frisian speaking.