FRISIAN - Sister Language(s) of English!
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- čas přidán 6. 06. 2024
- This video is all about FRISIAN, a close relative of the English language.
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Special thanks to Auke de Haan from learnfrisian.com (Instagram: learnfrisian) for his West Frisian audio samples, and for answering all my crazy questions.
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Music:
“Actually Like” by Twin Musicom.
Outro: “The Jazz Piano” by Bensound.com
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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: alphathon.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: Onno Gabriel.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Authors: ArnoldPlaton, Hayden120.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Authors: Temmo Bosse, Karte ohne Beschriftung.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: Semoziade.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Authors: Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Collectie Het Koninklijk Fries Genootschap.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: Alphathon.
Still images incorporating the above files are available for use under the same Creative Commons Sharealike license.
00:00 The relationship between English and Frisian
01:06 Varieties of Frisian
01:55 A brief history of the Frisian language
03:45 Everyday phrases
04:26 Breaking down Frisian sentences
11:21 Final comments
11:44 The Question of the Day
Hi everyone! I hope you like the video. If you want to learn some Frisian, visit learnfrisian.com (instagram: learnfrisian). It's run by the guy who helped with the audio samples, and it's a free Frisian learning website made with the intention of preserving and promoting Frisian.
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Have fun! :)
faz um videoh sobreh o idioma brasileiroh
Frisian seems a really fun language to learn but the problem is I wouldn't have anyone to speak it with, so it would be difficult to hold on to it. It does seem very close to English and thus not too difficult to learn. However I have studied German extensively so it may be that is why it seemed so intelligible
Maybe a funny fact for you. Until the mid of the 20th century there was another frisian language on the island of Wangerooge. It was considered as the most distinct frisian Language. The people who spoke that Language had to leave the island after a storm and on the mainland the Language died out. If you want me to send an article about that topic just ask
So would a modern-day English speaker understand more present-day French or Friesian if spoken to them
I shared your ig story with that guy 😊
Frisian is like if English decided to hang out with the Dutch instead of the French
It basically is
It sounds a lot like Swedish
@@harveymilne1684 As a Swede I both agree and don't agree. Much in common but Swedish of today has gone along another branch of the Germanic language tree.. But I totally understand your point.
English did indeed hang out with Scandinavians. The Angles and Jutes that gave "Anglo-Saxon" its name were Scandinavian (proto-Danes in the 400s) and so were the Old Norse people (Danes and Norwegians in the 700-900s). Even the french speaking Normans invading in 1066 had Scandinvian roots.
West Frisian might not be the best example to show the close relationship, because it is heavily influenced by Dutch. Some North Frisian dialect would work better.
I love how "Holy shit!" is considered an essential basic phrase
In English that is
@@_delta_music_ "Heilige Scheiße!" - very common in German.
Eita porra
c'mon guys let's learn portuguese
@@nr1229 So... German is basically English with a German accent?
@@alfrangomes454
that's a romance language
Speaking both English and German, this language is pretty intelligible. It is like English grammar using German vocabulary. Cool!
All except gender being a thing and conjugating verbs a little more often. But I totally agree! It is so cool!
@@samuelrobinson5842 Well, German has gender.
@@P4R5 we know Germany now has a thousand genders
@@Junkmailcrusades
😂😂 look at old English and old Frisian, they also have the same.
Actually above languages are alsmost 100% the same.
Dutch vocabulary
As german, finally English makes sense to me now after seeing this video.
This language is like a time machine, to the common origin of German and English!
This language is like German in English Grammar, really cool
Currently I study Old English at the university (I'm an English language and literature student in a non-English speaking country). Once I published a story on my instagram where I was reading a text in Old English. And some people replied that they thought it was German. I had studied German for about 2 years before starting Old English so yeah, I understand them lol
@@thatperson9835
Try old frisian, it's almost 100% the same.
Frisia was a land along the coast from Denmark to Belgium, they already traded in Roman times with the later english island.
Frisian has as the only germanic language the same with english in the word sheep.
One sheep, two sheep or ien skiep, twa skiep.
Many frisian word are nowadays the same sound as english but is written a little different. Green and grien are pronounced totally the same way, but written differently.
@@jacquelinevanderkooij4301 Thank you but I don't want it. If I decide to learn a language, the language must be useful and easy enough. I live in Georgia and I don't like the fact that I have to learn and speak Georgian cuz this language is going to die soon or late.
@Thomas T you are German
As a native Dutch/Frisian speaker:
I don’t really use Frisian in everyday life. (School, work) But as soon as we go out drinking, everyone suddenly switches to full Frisian
almost the same as west-flemish
Lol, I'm from Croatia and English had affected my life do much that I'll talk English when I go out with my friends and not Serbo-Croatian
COOL
It is bjusterbaarlik hoe goed at minsken Frysk brobbelje kinne as't d'r in burrel yn gooist!
It is amazing how well people can "speak" Frisian when you let people drink some alcohol ;)
Growing up in the Frisian culture were you aware of the close connection to English? Do you think Frisians find English easier to learn than other Europeans?
Hey, I'm a native speaker of West-Frisian, so I thought I'd give you some of my personal experiences.
I grew up learning Frisian alongside Dutch, as one of my parents is a Frisian native and the other isn't. This makes for the pretty interesting situation where my father usually speaks Frisian while my mother replies in Dutch, so they kind of talk two languages at the same time, which they don't even notice. When I'm at my parents' place/in Friesland, I always speak Frisian with my father, siblings and most people on the street. I speak Dutch with my mother. I almost never speak Frisian outside of the province though and that's sadly most of the time since I don't live in Friesland anymore.
Just as many minority languages, Frisian seems to be on its last legs, it's 'fiif foar tolve' for the language. Proficiency in reading and writing the language is low, many people don't teach the language to their kids anymore and the influence of Dutch in vocabulary and grammar has only been increasing.
Thank you for making this video Paul, I think its really cool that you took the time to give 'my' language some exposure!
Is Frisian closer to Dutch or English?
@@shaungordon9737 the latter
You should definitely teach the language to your children! Hate to see regional languages and dialects fall out of use.
@@shaungordon9737 Well according to German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers on this forum, they can all understand it. As an English speaker I can't understand a word. Frisian may the second closest language to English but I doubt English is that close to Frisian.
@@shaungordon9737 Frisian is definitely much closer to Dutch. Much closer.
My grandfather was Frisian, born and raised in De Lemmer in the south of Friesland. He had a Frisian dictionary where each new first letter started on a new page. It ended with one giant Z with nothing thereafter. There are no Frisian words that start with a Z...
We gave him a Frisian copy of the cartoon album 'Astérix and Cleopatra'. He was happily surprised when he noticed that when the characters moved up the river Nile the dialect changed from North Frisian to South Frisian, the region where he was born.
Zwaag= small agriculteral spot.😊
I’m from there too, and tbh I don’t know any Frisian words that start with a Z either….
@@kwiep9173 Its because they don't exist. Just like words starting with C, they have all been replaced with S.
I laughed a few times because of how similar Frisian is to the Black Country dialect in the Midlands of England. The old dialects are dying out but you still hear words like: 'bin; bist; folken; hark/harken; thole' etc...
So literally your first sentence:
'Dat binne har boeken'
In the Black Country dialect would be:
'Them's bin her booken'.
Which I thought was astounding! Especially if one used the more modern 'That' rather than 'Them'.
Anyway, those were my brief thoughts about the video. Excellent as ever.
I want to know more about this dialect. Do you have any sources?
More examples please! What does thole mean?
@@MB-co6qj 'Thole' is a middle English word (from old English 'Tholian') which literally means 'tolerate' but also 'endure/bear/undergo'. It is used also still in some Northern English dialects and I believe is 'tolerearje' in Frisian?
In a sentence one might say:
"I canna thole it!"
Which literally means:
"I can't tolerate it!"
But is more of an exclamation about something that is maybe getting on one's nerves, or trying one's patience like a loud noise or it may be about a person:
"I canna thole 'im"
Which again literally means:
"I can't tolerate him".
I have heard old Black Country also use 'dunna' for 'don't'. For example:
"Dunna thole 'is clarting about!"
Which means:
"Don't tolerate his messing about!"
One of my favourite Black Country sayings is:
"Bist thee bin or bist thee bay."
Which means:
"Are you or are you not."
Which is also another way of saying:
"To be or not to be."
A famous quote from Shakespeare.
@@paulmorris6414 tolerearje indeed! Tolereren in Dutch. Awesome saying! Didnt know that bay was a way of saying 'are not'! 👌
@@MB-co6qj Yes, it's old dialect and unfortunately dying out, but:
"ar bay agooin dahn theya!"
Means:
"I'm not going down there!".
Or:
"Bist thee cuming or bist thee bain't?"
Which is:
"Are you coming or are you not?"
Or even really simply:
"Ar bay!/Ar bain't!"; or "Ar dunna!"
"I am not!"; "I do not!"
When I’m out of the Province with my friend and we’re talking Frisian, other Dutch people start talking English to us 😂
We were in France and we heard a kid scream MEEEEEMMMM we were like ok there more here😂😂😂
lol gebeurt dat echt? zo grappig.. ik had ooit een Zweedse vriendin hier en als we dan Engels spraken, dachten mensen dat we allebei Nederlands waren doordat ons accent zo hetzelfde was en begonnen ze juist Nederlands tegen ons te praten, denkende dat we ons aan het uitsloven waren ofzo... mensen zijn echt raar, ze beginnen ook altijd Engels te spreken tegen m`n oom wanneer hij Nederlands spreekt, omdat hij een Italiaans accent heeft.. Nederlanders zijn echt zo een raar volk als het om taal gaat.
@@ps1hagrid268 Haha.. when on holiday and one thinks, "Lett's speak Frisian, no one will understand us".. I guarantee you: there is no holiday possible without ever running into a Frisian 😂😂 (those people get around!!)
That's ok. In Canterbury I got the Dutch back for you, by speaking German to them.
@@pyruvicac.id_ I thought that I will understand Frisian partly, because I am studying English and German now, but no, my English is too bad
Me: It's getting pretty late, I should probably go to sleep so I can get up at 7 am.
Also me: I must learn about this obscure language I will probably never encounter in my life, ever.
No, dan moatte wy der no in set fan ha. (See? You encountered it) 😉
It's 2:22 am and you described my exact situation
2:44 here.
I know it's not a competition but still😜
3AM, how did I get here?
I have encountered Frisian! Some of my colleagues spoke it when I visited the Netherlands in 1992.
I once spent a day in Northern Germany with a host who spoke only North Frisian. It is similar enough to English that we were able to carry on normal conversation all day, with just some occasional repeats or rephrasing to clarify sometimes. It was helpful that I had previously spent some time in Scotland and that I knew just a little bit of German, because a lot of the differences of Frisian from English resemble the way it would be said in Scots or German.
My Father was Frisian and went on holiday to Scotland once and had a similar experience. He was able to understand and talk to the people there. Frisian is actually more close to Scottish than to modern BBC English.
When I was at Wacken, which is not far from where North Frisian is still somewhat spoken, I chatted to some people who had come to Wacken from nearby to work there. They spoke Frisian (presumably North Frisian) and were far easier for me (a Scot, but largely a speaker of RP English due to schooling) to understand and converse with. It was quite interesting and Schleswig-Holstein has remained in my memory as a place I'd like to visit with more time to just wander around and speak to people. I had basically enough German to get by, and in particular to order drinks, but speaking to the Frisians was, if not effortless, eminently possible even after a few drinks. ;)
I'm from South Africa and this is so closely related to Afrikaans that I was thrown off for a second and then remembered Afrikaans stemmed from Dutch so it makes sense. Its cool that the way sentences are structured is basically the exact same too. And of course pronunciation.
My partner is from South Africa, having been educated in both Afrikaans and English schools. We moved from there to Friesland and been here now for 20 years or so. He spends a lot of time with Frisian friends and understands the language perfectly but refuses even to try and speak it. He communicates with them in English or Dutch. Between us we communicate mainly in English. I spend my childhood days in Friesland speaking Frisian, then moved to Rhodesia when I was 14, did my schooling there and became fluent in the English language, which I found easy to learn.
Frisian is like a sister of English that was raised by a Dutch grandma around 400 years ago, while English herself was raised by a French grandma, so she can't talk about complex subjects without mixing in a little French.
And Low Saxon is the Dad who, when his daughters were still toddlers, never came back from getting cigarettes ;D
Haha true
ok but the phonetics taught by this french or norman grandma turned out to be a mess
Basically summed up the video 😊
With German cousins
Born in Canada I learned Frisian and English simultaneously. My mother spoke Frisian to us children and we spoke English to her. Later, when I lived in the Netherlands briefly, folks in Amsterdam said I spoke Dutch with a Frisian accent. I don't hear the language much now except when I visit Friesland.
Very interesting. I hope you pass down your language to your children.
yep unfortunately frisian is kind of a dying language in many regions people just speak dutch most people (like me) are able to speak frisian but they dont speak it very often so thats why you dont hear it very often anymore
@@imsorryyoutube6774 q
@@davidnijboer7124 they should speak it if only to talk about people in front of their face if they are not familiar. lol I am often envious of anyone from another country speaking in their own language near you on their phone whilst out and about and I have no idea what they are saying.
Did you learn Dutch too or you just spoke Frisian in Amsterdam?
I'm from Belgium and I can understand Frisian almost perfectly because it's so close to both my language (Flemish/Belgian Dutch) and English. At the very rare occasion when a word isn't really related to Dutch or English big brother German steps in and I can understand the meaning of the word because of my highschool knowledge of German. I like the Frisian language a lot
Same here. And I'm not even a native speaker of Flemish :)
I'm a Frisian
Ek kan flaams heel goed verstaan as julle nie te vinnig praat nie. Ek praat Afrikaans. Ons verstaan Flaams makliker as Nederlands.
Vous parlez Francais ?
What that's awesome!
Historically, it is clear that Frisian was closer to English than to Dutch, but in the 21st century I think West Frisian is much closer to Dutch, and getting ever closer. Grammar, spelling and vocabulary, as well as pronunciation, of modern West Frisian is heavily influenced by Dutch. The languages are becoming more and more mutually intelligible.
I suppose the reason was DoggerLand amid those lands. It had gone under water and had became The North Sea. And languages began to skew (differ). BTW This explains very well about those frisians in West Denmark apart of other frisians.
@Retired Bore Mostly agreed but regarding DoggerLand I contempt official "history" after attempts to hide uneasy facts like a dynosaur footprint over human one and so on. You can look for story of St. Helen volcano eruption and how official "science" treats this.;-) And yes, I am not a native english speakers so I did not learn Chauser's English at school as well as many other funny things, alas! Even Shakespeare's "o're" from Hamlet was a real insult for our English teacher when I was happen to bring this book to the school and tried to figure out what is this.:-)
@@rooibosteana4245 It doesn't really explain English-Frisian split at all. Doggerland disappeared over 7000 years ago but Angles migrated to England in 5th century AD from current Schleswig-Holstein, that was the northeastern end of the continuous Anglo-Frisian chain on the North Sea coast (1:59). It has more to do with Angles merging with Saxons (other migrants from northern Germany) in England under Romano-Brythonic and later Danish and Norman-French influence.
@@Eppu_Paranormaali I answered against this argument two months ago, please check up before posting. I mean that time when Doggerland had really ended geologically. Official history is mostly a fake. It is enough just to start checking.;-) E.g. the pyramides are over the whole world, almost elsewhere. No attention and complete oblivion! In my land I've got too thin forest soul for its declared age.
Native English speaker. Looks and sounds very much Germanic. Don't see much in common with English.
*Common Phrases*
_"Holy Sh*t"_
Now that's a community of culture
That'd be fun to use regularily
We are the lazy generation
@@prla5400 I'm in my bathroom making..........
SHIT (just kidding)
Unfortunately, it means I can't share this video with my daughter. Why does everyone have to cuss in their videos now?
@@pinguinobc coppa
As a native english speaker, this language looks like someone took modern English pronunciations and spelled it with old English spellings and sprinkled dutch and german on top.
That's kind of what it is. If you speak Frisian, reading Beowulf or any Anglo Saxon poem and broadly understanding the language is not that hard
thats kinda like saying your dad looks like you, instead of you looking like your dad, but otherwise sure
-@@urbandiscount I googled Beowulf and i thought it's going to be an ancient thing but it was in 700-1000 ad xD
@@semregob3363 that's still over one thousand years old.
yes! also I'd like to add as someone who is studying german that the word order of frisian and german seem to line up quite a bit, though this may be dutch influence instead
I am Canadian by birth. Once, 20 years ago while still living in Brittany (near Tréguier) a friend of a Breton farmer had two North Frisian farmers as neighbours. They needed to communicate to work out a manure quota sharing deal. I was told they spoke English. They didn't. They spoke North Frisian. I spoke to them in my English and they to me in their North Frisian. (I speak Breton, French, a little German and have heard many various English dialects.) I understood their North Frisian well enough to agree on the manure quotas, and they understood my English. After the quota agreement signed, their wives and children came together for a lengthy "apéritif ". A lot was guesswork (hit and miss) but I was the interpreter between the French speaking Breton farmer and the North Frisian families. I had a grandmother who spoke Scots English and I think that may have helped. Understanding is easier than speaking. Passive versus active. Thank you for a very comprehensive exlplanation of the West Frisian dialect.
As an East-Frisian speaker, it was very interesting to hear the West Frisian language and realize how similar it it to mine.
I think you should mention the East Frisian language as well as it is still spoken where I'm from, which is East Frisia in the west of Germany (see on map at 1:56). Mostly older folks speak East Frisian with each other every day, and it's mostly used in our native sports, 'Bosseln' or 'Klootscheten' (a sort of street bowling). I learned the language from my grandpa but most young people don't learn it anymore unfortunately (I'm 25).
As a Dutch speaker "klootscheten" sounds very funny to me. It sounds like bullock farts, but I suppose it is meant to literally translate as ball shooting?
Mindstormer13, when i was north of Emden/Bremen area, i noticed the local lingo was called ‘platt’. I guess that stands for ‘platt-Deutsch’. Very recognisable to me as a Friesian speaker. How much commonality is left, i do not know. But then the family of germanic tongues spreads even to Scandinavia, i think.
Oh I'm a west Frisian
My grandparents were East Frisian and a recent DNA test pinpointed me there.
@@ypeveldhuis4527 My mom’s side of the family is from this area and told me her family spoke “platt Deutsch” and that when her brothers visited Germany from the USA they were not well understood, because they spoke low German.
I remember a friend telling me that his grandfather, who spoke English with a really thick Norfolk accent. He was perfectly understood in Friesland. The people there thought he was speaking Frisian.
There are probably old links
I find it hard to believe the native Frisian speakers thought the Norfolk English was Frisian.
I mean, I would recognize a perfect German speaker if he wasn't native, or had a bit of an accent, i'd know immediately where he's from.
Heck, in your mother tongue usually you recognize where people are from by the word choices they make
soenekken Most likely they just sounded similar to each other not that they were mutually intelligible. I never spoken to anyone from Friesland but every Dutch person I’ve met all around the Netherlands spoke English very well. Maybe it was like English with a Frisian accent
@@soenekken you underestimate how many different dialects frisian has. It could be entirely possible that they just thought he was from another part of the province.
@@zoutewand Impossible
I'm half Frisian... Will show this video to my mom, she always likes it when people are interested in her mother tongue.
Technically, if this is your mother's mother tongue, it is also your mother tongue.
@@WolfgangSourdeau not necessarily it depends what he learned first
Dextamartijn This is the joke ->
This is your head ->
Lol are you me? Same exact situation here, I know my mum will love it
@@TheRubinho96 Who says I'm not? Hehe
I am American and first read Frisian in the form of ingredients on a package about 40 years ago. I was immediately struck by how much it read like English and how much I could understand. I later learned the languages are closely related, and indeed, West Frisians have a lot of English ancestry. I myself had a West Frisian grandfather and English grandmother.
Nice presentation!
I'm Frisian and did an ancestry dna test with my partner (also Frisian), and my father. I'm 5% German from the Black Forest region, about 55% from the British continent and the rest is Scandinavian of some sort. My father and my partner's ancestries on the other hand are 100% from the British continent! xD So you're right about the English roots there
The fact that Anglo-Saxon runes are also called Anglo-Frisian runes gives quite a clue about just how closely English and Frisian are related.
Dat is Fenna's boek.
Me: Hey, I can understand Frisian!
Paul: This form is not used so much.
Me: :(
That is completely Dutch though,...........so..........you understand Dutch (: lol
Das ist Fenna ihr Buch 😊. Now I understand why some Germans build their sentences like this. Everyone understands that. but sorry, it is wrong and the teacher will mark this as a mistake.
Das ist Fenna's buch (German), normal and colloquial way..
@@HonestSaxSound-unEdited- Du meinst den Döspaddel-Apostroph? Ich lebe aktuell im Umland von Berlin, da sagen die Kinder häufig Sätze wie „Ich warte auf die Chantalle ihre Mama“. „Oder Das ist meine Schwester ihr Fahrrad“. Ich konnte mir diesen Satzbau bisher nicht erklären. Scheint also mit niederdeutschem Dialekt zusammenzuhängen, der rudimentär trotz Berliner Einfluss noch vorhanden ist. Kann mir kaum vorstellen, dass Otto der Außerfriesische dafür verantwortlich ist.
@@Nedra007 Berlinerisch ist ja ein Soziolekt, der letztendlich ein stark ausgeprägtes niederdeutsches Substrat hat (Ick, wat, dat/dit, usw.). Zusätzlich kommen noch ein paar Einflüsse aus dem märkischen Mitteldeutsch.
Dit is meine Schwester ihr Fahrrad
I too am a native West-Frisian speaker. Frisian being my first language, Dutch my second language. I rarely spoke Dutch before I went to kindergarten since Frisian is the predominant language within our family. I speak Frisian daily. Working in health, care it's easier to connect to people using their first language. It instantly creates a slight feeling of belonging and recognition, so I'm glad I speak the language and am able to connect with other native Frisian speakers more easily.
Outside of work and family situations (e.g. in stores or public places) I interchange between the two, but usually opt to start in Dutch as to avoid awkward situations when it turns out the other person might not understand. Most native Frisians have learned to shift between languages effordlessly, but once you have grown used to speaking Frisian with someone it's super hard to speak Dutch to them, even if there is a non-Frisian speaker in your company. Most Frisians really do try.
And your English is impressive too.
@@Donnie-Lee-Gringo Thank you. I lived in the US as well :)
@Caner Birgül Some will try, but especially the pronunciation is hard for Dutch people. Every Frisian knows Dutch. so therefore it isn't needed to learn for normal daily life. So some will try, but it's limited.
Ahoy there
@@StJohnsMount007 is English easy for you? Since English is a sister language
That’s interesting because even though the languages are very different phonetically, native Frisian speaker word-for-word translate their sentences to English without thinking to much.
I’m Portuguese native speaker and when speak in English I gotta constantly think about the order of adjectives, because they are different in Portuguese
same in French lol it’s basically “cat black” instead of “black cat”
Im a portuguese speaker too and I literally never think about the order of adjectives, I coudnt even describe it. I just know something like "tall black man" is right and other orders are wrong.
@@Vitorruy1 Count me in as another portuguese speaker that acts exactly like you do.
maybe you're already there since this comment is 11 months old, but it will come naturally when you continue speaking or writing english daily. i'm frisian/dutch, but as i'm kind of a noliver i use english on the internet every day, and now i use it every day at work too cause there's people from eastern europe working with us. once you used it enough you just get used to it and even start thinking in multiple languages too.
@@carlivasquez6840 french has exeptions at least, such as nouvelle [noun]"new" & ancien [noun] "former". [noun] ancien means "old" though.
Native speaker here. I guess I use Frisian more than Dutch. My husband is also Frisian, so ofcourse we speak Frisian when we are together. We also message in Frisian. At work I speak Frisian with about 8 out of 11 collegues. Next to that I have lots of clients who talk Frisian or “ stêdsfrysk” or “Liwadders”. I write my emails and messages in Frisian with them and also with friends and family. When I have to make a phonecall to a company in Fryslan, I start in Frisian, when they talk Dutch I switch. In shops and restaurants I start in Frisian. In my friendcircle the majority is also Frisian, and we communicate in Frisian ofcourse. Family = also all Frisian except from 3 cousins who grew up in Rotterdam, but they understand Frisian, but dont speak. Even my 3 American cousins understand it.
The guy who spoke the sentences has a Wâlds accent, meaning he is coming from the northeastern part of Fryslan. Im from the south west ( fan e klaai) and also in such a small stretch of kilometers there is quite some difference.
In the 1970s my late grandmother living in Friesland (who didn't speak a word of English) was able have a conversation with a woman (tourist) from England! At the time we though it to be funny and odd, but now I finally understand why and how, thanks!
I would guess that It would be similar to some one who speaks Spanish and someone who speaks Italian or French. Understandable once you figure out the major changes and you have decent comprehension skills.
I speak both German and English and am learning Dutch so I would like to go to and see what I can understand just from what I pick up not really having studied the language.
@@lostincyberspaceIII The biggest problems seem to come from sources of vocabulary, english and dutch would be pretty decently mutually intelligible if English hadn't borrowed sooo many words from latin/french roots. A similar but different problem arises with dutch and german, where I see many german words that I recognize either as something that used to exist in old dutch, or that has taken on a different meaning in dutch nowadays. So even though the languages are structured really similary and many of the most basic and common words are almost the same, you end up really easily confused by differences in vocabulary. There's also often an asymetric relation with these things, from what I've learned Dutch speakers have a better time understanding German than vice versa. I can understand German pretty well for someone that doesn't really speak it, but I can't produce German in a way that is understandable to Germans. There's many false friends in the vocab.
Few years ago I was in Friesland and I was kind of lost in a village there, an older lady came up the road and i tried to ask her about the bus in English, she didn't understand, I switched to German and we managed to understand each other speaking German and Frisian
I always thought that was interesting, as it was much harder usually to do the same with Dutch speakers
@@lostincyberspaceIII no, italian and spanish are a lot more similar than english and frisian
@@bruh666 And I can understand Dutch pretty well. But unfortuanally I can't produce Dutch in the same way...
I was raised monolingually Frisian in a village near Leeuwarden and didn't speak any Dutch before I started at school, age 6. From the very start of my schooling, all we spoke, read and wrote in class was Dutch, even though 95% of the pupils were native speakers of Frisian, as well as the teachers. This was in the late 60's, when most people did not have a television set yet, and migration from the city to the surrounding villages had not yet started. Frisian has long been looked down on, even by its own speakers, and an inferiority complex was imposed on us by the Hollanders. Many Frisian-speaking parents even spoke Dutch to their children in an attempt to increase their chances of success in life. I am a proud speaker of Frisian, even though I haven't lived there since 1980. Fortunately, Frisian has proven to be resilient (we Frisians are known to be resilient!) and the Frisian language has survived and is now recognized as an official language. Frisian is also taught more widely at schools in Friesland, but there still is a long way to go. I liked your video, but I missed examples of the similarities in vocabulary between Frisian and English: brea-bread, tsiis-cheese, skiep-sheep, toer-tower, wiet-wet, wike-week, efter-after, grien-green, read-red. And of course the famous expression: Bûter, brea en griene tsiis, wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries. (Butter, bread and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is not a true Frisian).
Meist altyd thûs komme :]
From what village are you, my grandfather was in the exact same situation as you :)
On some old maps, Frisland seems to used to have been its own little island east of Greenland, but nowadays that island is never on maps. Do you know anything about this?
"Butter, Brot und grüner Käse, wer das nicht sagen kann, ist kein aufrechter Friese." Ich bin kein Friese, sondern ein Westfale und kann es trotzdem verstehen. ☺😊
Good examples os you. They are clearly more related to Englsih than to Dutch. The k>ts is something Frisian and English share.
I speak West-Frisian mostly with family and a few friends from Friesland. These days I live in a Dutch speaking part of the country, but coming home to my native village in Friesland and hearing people in the streets and the shops speak Frisian feels like a warm blanket to me, or putting on a pair of old but very comfortable shoes. My girlfriend, who is Indonesian, also noticed its similarity to English.
One fun experience I had speaking Frisian was with an old friend (who is also Frisian) I was visiting in Sheffield. A lady waiting at the same bus stop as us was very intrigued, she correctly deduced we weren't speaking Dutch, or German, or a Scandinavian language, but that it did sound similar to those. So we got to tell her a little about Frisian :)
This is cool because my last name is Friesen and my ancestors come from Friesland. My parents first language was Plattdeutsch because of our Dutch Mennonite roots. But my ancestors there go back to at least the 1400s. I wonder how similar Frisian is to Plattdeutsch, especially given the centuries of separation. My ancestors moved often, because of persecution, from Netherlands to Germany to Poland to Ukraine and finally to Canada.
English: Thank you
Frisian: TIGER TANK!!!!!!
😂
Norwegian: Tusen Takk!
Afrikaans: Dankie
@@willmurphy4073 Swedish: Tusen tack!
Nah, according to 4:03, Thank you - Tankewol
"Paul explaining the difference between Holland and The Netherlands made my day" ~me, a Dutchman
Well actually this is the truth yeah!
Greetings my nederland bro from Bulgaria! :)
Funny that in my native language Netherlands is called Holland and the Netherlands is there to denote to many countries in that proximity (Belgium, Netherlands etc). Talk about confusing.
It is also an exercise of retentive anal behavior since Holland can and still is colloquially used to indicate the entire country. Only since the beginning of 2020 there are some exceptions for formal usage. Or are you one of those people that have been chanting "Hup The Netherlands Hup" all their adult live at international football matches?
@DarkLevis
Wow! Indeed, that is quite confusing (and interesting), may I ask you where you come from?
You are aware that the official Dutch Tourist Board discourages the name "the Netherlands" and promotes "Holland" instead? You are fighting a losing battle, my friend.
I am a native Swedish speaker with English as my second, and German as my third language. After having lived in Belgian Flanders for a few years I have come to the realisation about all of these northwest European languages, and especially after hearing some Frisian, how closely related they all are. After a while it is quite easy to understand most Dutch, and even before being exposed to it, it sounded very much like mixing English and German (now of course the reason is more one of divergence rather than convergence, but the effect is similar).
It is an almost sliding scale from Dutch, via Frisian, on through Danish, before arriving at Swedish. Norwegian feels like a spoken dialect of the same language as Swedish, but a written dialect of Danish (at least the bokmål variety). I personally prefer the term Scandinavian to the blanket terms Swedish, Danish, Norwegian etc. and rather distinguish the dialects, but that is perhaps a bit too granular in general use. However there is a very obvious distinction from the “West Scandinavian” languages. Icelandic and Faeroese are not immediately mutually intelligible to us from the continent, so they are definitely a different language altogether today.
Thanks for this. It was very nice to get a glimpse into our linguistic cousins in Frisian.
Melvin, I heard Norwegians, Swedes and Danes can essentially understand each other’s languages, as they’re so similar. Plus, I think most people in these countries speak English very well. Plus, I’ve heard Finnish is completely different, and it is impossible to guess anything as it’s in a different language group!
@@lukek1949 that is indeed the case. Linguistically it is more like one Scandinavian language with quite distinct dialects. There are a few false friends between them but mostly they are mutually intelligible. It comes down to how much you are exposed to the "other ones" I suppose. For me there are Swedish dialects that are harder to grasp than standard Danish for example.
And you are also right that Finnish is quite different, not being a Scandinavian language. It is Finno-Ugric and is closer related to Estonian, the Same languages, and Hungarian. Though Finnish and Hungarian are not mutually intelligible.
@@wilhelmeley6617 I don’t know your background, but personally I prefer “Scandinavian” or even “Nordic”. North Germanic, despite being a perfectly acceptable term for the languages, feels without any personality. So I will continue using Scandinavian. I have never heard any Danes, Færøingar, or Icelanders complain about it. The West Scandinavian languages they speak originated here and ended up diverging with time.
With the same logic you could say that the Nordics are neither German nor particularly Germanic these days.
I only discovered this channel yesterday, and I love it. Keep up the great work.
Frisian is indeed the "missing link" in the language continuum that is formed by German, Lower Saxon, Dutch, (Frisian) and English. You did a great job at illustrating this from a structural point of view.
Sonically, it's true as well though... As an example: German: "Strasse", Dutch: "Straat" (Lower Saxon: Stroat), Frisian: "Strjitte", English: "Street".
My parents spoke Dutch and Frisian. In her old age, my mother helped other oldsters read letters from Friesland. She wouldn't write letters in Frisian, though, because she was embarrassed about not being able to spell it very well. Another interesting anecdote: my wife and I were invited to our neighbors' house for lunch. He said a prayer before the meal. I could hear it was Dutch. I asked him, "why didn't you pray in Friesian, your native language?" He tried to explain that Frisian was 'too coarse' to use when speaking to God. It would be irreverent. Imagine! Another interesting anecdote: twice in my life, when introducing myself, the other party was thrilled that I had a Friesian name, Cammenga. This happened once in Seattle and once in Chicago.
Near the Frisian capitol Leeuwarden once (in the 9th century) existed a 'villa Cammingha hundari' if I remember correct. A noble family by the name of Camminga/Kamminga was one of the leading families in Oostergo, a shire in the current province of Friesland in the late middle ages. Yours is an interesting name.
(The 'hundari' part I mentioned, refers to a pack of 'one hundred' warriors ready to defend their community against Vikings or other clans. It's a typical west germanic warband going back into early medieval times.)
Wooow amazing anecdote 😳
Did you at least try to get their numbers?
I've never heard that name or version of it in Frisian before. That's rather interesting. I'm more familiar with the Frisian surnames ending in "ma" or "stra". My mother was a Bergsma and my wife is a Zylstra, both of course from Friesland. I grew up in Canada but there is a fairly large Dutch and Frisian population in my area.
You learn something everyday. Thanks.
@@MrEnaric
Great information. My mother grew up near Akkrum, about 20K south of Leeuwarden. Learning about Frisian history has always fascinated me.
it's true, frisian is just too rough to be spoken formally
It's kind of interesting that Frisian sounds more like Scandinavian languages than English to me.
Yes I notice some swedish in there
It sounds a LOT like North Eastern English (Geordie, Mack'em). The numbers are very similar, and words like "Gān" are still very common. For EG if I was to say "I'm going home" I'd say "am gān hyem"
@@benanderson89 thanks to you i finally know the cognate of the english word home in german, it‘s heim, because Hyem looked just really similar
English is at its core more Scandinavian than Frisian is.
The original form of English is very scandinavian
I have been learning Dutch for about 3 months now, and I noticed a lot more similarities between Dutch and West Frisian than English, but I'm sure that knowing both would immensely help me understand it.
3:47 Basic Phrases in West Frisian
4:31 Those are her books
5:20 Those are Fenna's books
5:44 Those are the books of Fenna
5:57 Those are Fenna her books
6:46 That is Fenna's book
6:57 That is Fenna's book version 1
7:01 That is Fenna's book version 2
7:59 Those are her books
8:00 Those books are hers
8:07 She has read fifteen books this year
9:02 A few numbers
9:35 We usually stay at home in the evening
10:22 Almost everyone went home early because of the storm
Based on a much longer scenario that I won't bore you with, a Dutch penfriend that my mother had when she was a teenager, visited my mother in Yorkshire, where a family friend proceeded to make an ass of himself by speaking in a broad Yorkshire dialect to my mother's friend. The Dutch friend was from Frisland and was able to understand Yorkshire dialect perfectly well.
Wow thanks for sharing that
I have this with Scottish, Scottish accents and Irish accents. Although it takes my brain a few seconds to find the right "translation key" 🤣
He's from Yorkshire and he spoke in his Yorkshire accent.absolutely crazy, what was he thinking.
@@israeladesanya4596 No, not an accent, an accent is something completely different. .... An "accent" is using standard grammar but with idiosyncratic pronunciation, usually associated with a specific geographic area. Whereas "dialect" is a regional variation of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary i.e. it's a linguistic variation from standard grammar.
You may not be familar with Yorkshire dialect, but, as per my original Comment above, it has some retained some aspects of old English, such as "thee" and "thine", the singular forms of "you" and "yours", unlike modern English.
And one other thing, pertinent to understanding my original comment, most Yorkshiremen are perfectly capable of speaking standard Engish _if they want to,_ using dialect is a _choice_ for them. :)
This is interesting as yorkshire/cumbrian is also the origin of the American "southern accent".
A lot of it sounds like English, but doesn’t look like it when written.
normaal
When has the written word ever been a good guide. One Won😗
@@QPRTokyo Swedish maybe?
English writting doesn't even look like itself when spoken
@@juch3 I'm crying at how true this is 🤣 Onomatopoeia sounds nothing like how it's written, and that's only one example of many lmao
I'm a native Frysian. Of course we speak Frysian on almost every occassion we have. We're starting up a rockband using Frysian lyrics. I feel/believe that Frysian language fits quite well to music (like English.
I agree that Frysian has a few simularities with English. But we have simularities with German, Danish and Dutch as well. Overall, nice video though!
Cheers,
Pieter
As a native Swedish speaker this sounds more like Icelandic and several of the words you are translating immediately make sense or sound similar in Swedish, Norwegian or Danish (I'm not familiar with Icelandic but I guess it is the same for them)
Wow. As a speaker of both English and German, I feel I could learn this language easier than many others. Fascinating video man.
Give it a try ;)
@@learnfrisian I really want to learn Frisian (however little that maybe) but there's lack of learning resources, that's the problem.
@@Aditya-te7oo Have you tried www.learnfrisian.com already? This website has now a lot of content on it :)
As someone who speaks Dutch, German and English i feel like this would probably be the easiest language to learn for me by far (Along with Plattdeutsch) although there really wouldn't be any point since it's barely used and the people who speak it also often speak more popular (and therefore more usefull) languages
@@beu9245 Plattdeutsch aus welcher Gegend? :-)
Every time that I hear Frisian, it feels like my brain is telling me, "Hey, wait, I understand what he's saying. Except I don't."
I might understand one out of every ten words for spoken German or Dutch, but with Frisian, I can almost always get one, and often two.
I often like to listen to Friesen & pick out the English words. I imagine this is what West Romance speakers feel when they hear Romanian. So close but so different.
@@johnnydiva exactly. It makes very stark how close West Romance languages are, compared to the English isolation. We can hold basic conversations in two or three languages at a time without ever having learnt the other ones.
@@johnnydiva Romanian sounds like if Italian married Russian.
I speak both English and dutch and for me dutch always seemed close to English. Friesian seems like a solid halfway point between the two. I almost think I could just pick Friesian up on the street if I lived in Friesland for a few weeks. So cool!
I am Frisian by birth. I lived in Holland, near Amsterdam, for 50 years. My Dutch speaking family (when I married), colleagues, friends didn't understand me, when I was speaking Frisian. I had a Scottish friend, and when I spoke slowly, then he could understand many words. Interesting! My (grand-) children don't speak Frisian, they all live in Holland. But they do understand as well, when a Frisian talk a little slower. I live in Friesland again, last year I have chosen, to go back. Southwest Friesland this time I was born in Northeast Friesland. I talk daily Frisian and Dutch, because most of the people came from outside Friesland.
North East Friesland? So in Germany?
@@nebucamv5524 North-east in the PROVINCE of Friesland! Not in Germany. I know that the north part of Germany is so cald East-Friesland. 💖
Thank you for preserving the Frisian language😊
I'll never really learn it since I've never known about it until today and my region in the Americas will never use it sadly. Still... Nice to see native speakers like yourself here.
Were you drinking when he would understand you? :) The Scottish should be the world's greatest linguists just from trying to understand each other. I can usually handle one at a time but if there are three speaking I give up, sometimes convinced they are just making up words. Wouldn't put it past them.
@@seasidescott good one 'Scott' 😂😂
In some ways Frisian sounds like it’s made of English phonemes jumbled up and rearranged. I was once sitting at a restaurant near Seattle and in the booth next to me was a group of people speaking a “strange” language. My ears grew larger and larger as I tried to ID it. It wasn’t German, Dutch? No...too many words sounded almost, but not quite like English. I finally asked the group. They were from the East Frisian area of Lower Saxony and were speaking Frisian.
Eastwind except Frisian is older than English
I'm from Germany and I've never heard someone actually speak it (obviously I'm from another region). Interesting that you on the other hand have heard someone on another continent 😃
Ja, darum denke ich, dass Frisian könnte schwieriger für Englische Sprechler zu lernen, es ist zu ähnlich, und es hört durcheinander aus. Ich würde lieber eine Romanische Sprache. Oder Deutsch.
there are very little speakers of Frisian in Lower Saxony, though there is a dialect of Low German called East Frisian. This is the version of Low German spoken in the former Frisian areas in Lower Saxony and it's more likely to meet someone who speaks this dialect.
@@drewmandan Ich liebe die deutsche Sprache, und ich hoffe, dass ich schließlich ziemlich fließend werden... Dänisch auch.
I know this doesn't really matter considering the video is about Frisian, but thank you for actually including Scots Leid! We're always forgotten about because non-Scots, who aren't experts in any sense, always claim it's a dialect or doesn't even exist, despite what people who actually know what they're talking about might say.
As a native speaker of this neglected and looked down upon language of the British Isles, thank you, even if it was just a brief mention :)
My pleasure! I do have a video about Scots, by the way. If you search for “Langfocus Scots” you’ll find it. 👍🏻
It’s my pleasure! I do have a full video about Scots, by the way. If you search for “Langfocus Scots” you’ll find it. 👍🏻
@@Langfocus Yess apparently I've watched it before, actually! Don't have any memory of watching it though, so I was planning on giving it a rewatch.
As a Swede and Nordic germanic speaking person the Frisian is much more related to old norse language and very much like today's Norwegian. For me the English language has borrowed so many Latin words that old words have been replaced.
The numbers are just like the way my uncles count. They are Scottish farmers.
HamishMackenzie7 there is definitely a big Frisian influence in Scottish English, particularly in the NE
Qimodis well actually Flemish/Frisian merchants played a big role in the history of the north east, so some of their words led directly into the Aberdeenshire dialect of Doric
Some of them are also similar to the traditional numbering systems used by sheep farmers in Yorkshire and Cumberland.
I-
@VFM #7634 what happened is all the land north of the Humber didnt get the influence like the rest of the country over the enforcement of the Kings English. Im from East Riding of Yorkshire and we have the biggest dialect in England by far, over 4000 words, it seems the River Humber was a barrier from the south and the geography of it meant it was essentially cut off from the rest of England with people only droving and taking their wares and cattle to Market Weighton to be sold then they would be sent onto either York or Leeds. It was only when the railways came that languages changed, but right up the east coast of the UK from the Humber we all have words and how we pronounce words that make us different to the rest of the UK. www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/we-yorkshire-folk-are-not-other-brits-its-our-dna-483325
As a Frisian I talk to everyone that talks Frisian. In the village I live I would say that 95% talks Frisian. But in the town I go to school (Sneek) there are only a couple of people that talk Frisian in my class. I think Frisians are really proud of their language, I’m too. I can get really pissed when people call Frisian a dialect. And that happens a lot. I makes me sad to hear that Frisian is considered endangered.
Edit: Grammar
Snake snits
It’s the same here in Flanders and West-Flemish. The rest of Flanders regards it as a dialect while it’s a lot older than Dutch/Flemish we know today. It’s 700 years old and has more in common with Middelnederlands and even English as there is a lot Ingvaeonic influences.
@@edwarddergraf LOL I thought it said snake tits I was like "why would you say that"
Btw, as a native English speaker, use "speak" instead of "talk." I can't really explain it, but it's throwing me off. I think it's because in writing, it sounds better to write "speak," but when you're actually speaking to someone in person, you would use "talk." So speak is writing/typing and talk is for speaking. Not in all cases though, but use "talk" less because it sounds more primitive, I guess? But definitely in all the cases you used "talk," switch them out for "speak" to sound more native.
JGirDesu Thank you, I know I don't speak english very good, but I'm trying to improve it.
your channel is unique in that it is accessible but gives actual dives into the languages with concrete examples. really lives up to the "focus"
Thanks! That’s what I aim to do, so I’m glad to hear that it comes across that way.
Combined numbers in English were archaically rendered in the same way as Frisian, e.g. "four and twenty" (as in blackbirds, baked in a pie). When I was young, some people still referred to the time as "five and twenty past/to" the hour.
Maybe, but German (and Dutch?) still have this.
My grandparents generation (all born around 1915) still used that method. I think I did within the family for a long time.
I always find it interesting that even though English is the “least pure” Germanic language, it preserves many old Germanic sounds like “th” and “w” that have been largely lost in most other Germanic languages other than the insular North Germanic languages.
Right? Of all the Germanic languages to preserve oddball old sounds, it just had to be the most evolved, bastardized, least historical Germanic language that kept historical sounds.
And Elfdalian, spoken in Sweden :)
Popdartan Thank you for letting me know!
Icelandic did the same thing with its sounds while at the same time keeping the highly complex grammar. It’s kind of cool to see how radically different and diverse the Germanic language family really is.
þat's just þe ƿǣ it is
My grandma (beppe) is Frisian, and growing up I just always thought she spoke Dutch (she speaks mostly English after being in the US for the past 60 years). When I tried to learn Dutch a few years back I realized it was NOT her native language! And I find I can sometimes understand what she's saying when she speaks with her sisters on the phone in Frisian.
So you call her beppe that funny my mother is Frisian and all my grandparents are but my dad an siblings are Dutch and you got you kno 2 grandmothers and to grandfathers and since my mother are all frisian we call those pake en beppe (Frisian) and the other who lived in Holland for some time opa en oma (Dutch) so they are kind of distinct and easy to know you’re talking about
Beppe: That's one word that seems to have made it into American English somehow. For instance, Laugh-In used to use that phrase, 'old aunt bippy' ...even though they're seemingly making fun of an already antiquated usage, in the 1960's. However, there's no telling what route it took... I'm thinking it's left over from Dutch (Frisian) settlers or immigrants, in old New Amsterdam.
@@ps1hagrid268 Same! Other people are so confused. "Oh, je opa is overleden?"
'Nee, mijn pake...'
I had the same experience, except my Omas spoke Gronings dialect, which is closer to German.
I've never seen another language use the possessive s before, so even if it's dying out that's pretty cool.
Frisian seems like what English could have been if it had stayed germanic instead of adopting Latin and Greek influences.
German also uses the possessive "s" in the case of proper nouns. For example, it is "Beethovens Sinfonien" - Beethoven's Symphonies - not "Sinfonien des Beethovens". For masculine and neuter non-proper nouns, German adds an s, like this: "my brother's dog" is "Der Hund meines Bruders" (the dog of my brother)
We also have it in Dutch! "Mijn moeder's boeken" (my mother's books)
How has Frisian adopted "Greek influences"? Via English? Via tertiary subjects? Haha reminds me of the father in Big Fat Greek wedding saying proudly, "Behind every English word is a Greek word." Excellent video! Enjoyed comments a lot. My first language was Dutch until school, then Australian English took over, though we kept on switching between English and Dutch at home. On a day visit to Friesland when I grew up, I was amazed I could understand Fries/Frisian better than my Dutch aunt! My Frisian grandmother passed away when my father was just a toddler. She was born in Exmorra, featured on the place sign early in this excellent video.
We use possessive s in Swedish.
Thank you so much for having covered Frisian too! :D
Interesting trivia about Frisian-Americans: despite the relatively low number of Frisian-Americans, there were three Apollo era NASA astronauts of Frisian ancestry: Stuart Roosa, Al Worden and Jack Lousma. Roosa and Worden both went to the moon (Apollo 14 & 15), but didn't walk on the moon as both were Command Module pilots and stayed in orbit when the LEM landed. Lousma flew on Skylab and an earluy Space Shuttle mission. He also played a big part ion the rescue of Apollo 13, as he was the CapCom at the time of the explosion on the CM. Worden and Lousma were both from Southern Michigan, which I'm guessing must have a concentration of Frisians.
Frisians are known for their brilliance and good looks :)
Yes, there are many people of Frisian heritage living in Southern Michigan, including many of my relatives.
Great comment. I love links between things totally unrelated. I shall remember forever the NASA Frisian connection, and my next challenge is to find the opportunity to pass it on.
@@Green4321 Holland, Michigan is a city founded in 1847 by Dutch Calvinists. But remember that to Americans 'Dutch" means anyone from the Netherlands (and even parts of Germany as in Pennsylvania Dutch).
I’m from southwest Michigan which is majority Dutch ancestry while the rest of the state is primarily German and African ancestry so yeah it has a higher concentration
Hello everyone, hello Paul! Thanks for making this video! I'm a native West-Frisian speaker myself. Grew up speaking it at school and at work. In the comments I read a lot of comments telling that in the cities Dutch is the most spoken language due to employment opportunities and mixing cultures. That's absolutely true. I use the language almost on a daily basis when I talk to family, friends or Frisian colleagues. I think nice equal Frisian/English words would be:
- Tegearre = Together
- Kaai = Key
- Tsiis = Cheese
- Grien = Green
- Efter = After
- Dei = Day
- Doar = Door
- Dream = Dream
- Goes = Goose
- Him = Him
- Miel = Meal
- Noas = Nose
There are a lot more... Just to give you an impression :p
In 1986 the BBC/PBS produced an excellent television series called "The Story of English". The second program, which focuses on the roots of English, begins in Friesland.
@@anthropology4everyone622 Wow! How interesting!
@@anthropology4everyone622 I just re-watched that series the past couple days. I enjoyed it just the same as when I first saw it back in '86.
@@gardubentyswoze7040 It is probably the best television series I have ever seen . I wish I could buy a Blu-ray or DVD set.
@@anthropology4everyone622 Harrass the BBC to release it. lol
Thanks! I’ve just begun to learn Dutch and this seems like a link between English & Dutch. Definitely see similarities with both.
I speak Frisian with my wife and she speaks in Dutch back to me.. 😄 at work, shops, family I speak Frisian. This keeps the language alive.
Is Frisian more like Dutch than English?
Man, the "most similar" language to English, and it's entirely unintelligible to me. Anglophones really got screwed in the "learning other languages" department.
I guess that's why we had to develop coping mechanisms, like "taking over half the fucking world and making everybody learn English instead"
Apple Islander it worked lmao
I actually found I could understand a fair amount of it, but I'm also learning Norwegian, so maybe I'm just finding more similarities with that instead.
French isn't too different and vocabulary-wise, quite easy to learn.
@@ChakatSandwalker Frisian is very much like Scandinavian languages.
... How come we never got "Holy $h|t!" in videos of other languages?... lol!
Probably because the Frisian word is actually pretty funny.
It's a bit of a joke word.
Surprisingly Google translate uses the exact same translation when translating from Frisian.
Also alot of people really only use frisian when they’re angry.
In Portuguese doesn’t make much sense: “Merda Santa!”. Once I’ve read a book about human fossils. The scientists at first didn’t find anything, until someone found a tooth under some dik-dik dung, and went with fitting “holy shit!”. The book translated as “merda santa!”, which no one speaking Portuguese really says. We do speak “puta merda!”, though.
@@Me1le That explains a lot.
Living in north Frisia it’s great to see people getting informed about us. Thank you very much
I'm a native English speaker who took 2 years of German in highschool. it honestly surprised me how similar frisian is to german. it sounds similar to English phonetically, but spelling looks more german and sentence structure is a mix of german and English but closer to german. especially the numbers, so many numbers sound/look like they'd sound like the german numbers.
Hi, I live in South Africa and my home language is Afrikaans (with English being my second language). It is so surprising to me every time I hear a language like Dutch, German and even Frisian, because I can understand most of the languag. Of course this is mainly due to the fact that Afrikaans exists because of Dutch settlers in South Africa long ago, but I love how so many other languages are structured in such a way that I can understand many more languages than I can speak. Thank you for the interesting video! It is important to keep languages alive, I see this with Afrikaans being one of newest languages in the world, with a decline in people speaking it. Enjoy your day! Baie dankie! ✨
@@chaden9498 agreed!
Afrikaans exist today because my First nation KHOEKHOE ancestors traded with Dutch Colonisers at the Cape who could not speak the most advanced language of KHOEKHOE but still needed our cattle. We than took KHOEKHOE and Dutch creating what would be called Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaner which in the 1700's meant my KHOEKHOE Abogan or ancestors..
And I have that with Afrikaans. I have to concentrate a bit but then I understand much of it.
Ek kan die Afrikaner goed verstaan en die taal een bietjie skryf. Maar goed ek luister ook naar, Van Coke Kartel, Fokofpolisiekar, Die Heuwels Fantasties, Straatligkinders :) Groet uit Nederland!
Ek probeer 'n bietjie afrikaans te praat.
A video comparing European with Latin American and African Portuguese and Spanish would be great
I think the brazilian variant is the most distinct one, isn't it?
@@rafagd basically latino spanish and african portuguese follow the european norms of the royal spanish and portuguese academies
@@rafagd only Brazil has its own rules in the portuguese language
African Portuguese isn't really specific. Different former Portuguese colonies there like Angola, Cape Verde, have their own varients of Portuguese. I believe the Cape Verdean people speak a creole form of it.
@@Cindy99765 it is not specific because Portuguese is not the mother tongue of all these countries.
it is only the official language of governments.
the population speaks native and creole languages mainly outside the capitals.
Great video! I teach a course in The History of the English Language, during part of which we look at a few versions of the Lord's Prayer, including one on West Frisian, as this is a text you can find in any language. This video has helped with my pronunciation and provided a few other grammatical details that my students will appreciate.
Very nicely done presentation! You do it in such a way that makes it intuitive with a little watching. Great job!
As a German Dane, I grew up in the proximity of 5 languages: Frisian, Plattdeutsch, German, Danish and Sønderjysk (my native tongue). Living in Copenhagen, people seem to focus on the narrow bonds between Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. But I find it much more interesting to see, how much German, Sønderjysk, Frisian and Dutch are similar to each other and hence similar to English.
Sønderjysk er en dialekt :3
@Robert Hartmann Your writing is 100% correct Danish. A Norwegian would have to confirm, if it's correct Norwegian as well. Several Norwegians have told me, that spoken Sønderjysk (southern Jutlandish), is easier for them to understand than Rigsdansk (Reichsdänish).
maybe you already know, but look for Angel Saxen ...these were the rudiments of our languages...
I’m American with German and Danish ethnicities. I went to a German Lutheran school when young. Plus I picked up a bit of Danish. My wife is from the Netherlands. I’ve heard Frisian and understood quite a bit. It was odd in way. I told the person most of what he said back to him in English. Everybody was really surprised.
@@williamchristian8705 for an american that is odd..but your heritage says it all...be proud and also feel the connection...nice story.
Im glad i can speak this language i want to keep it alive
Id like to learn!!
@@kithand1106 there's a university from the Friesland province that does like 3 weeks free and like $55/yr. Online too. Check that out.
@@tomrogue13 wow what is it called?
is it just me or does Frisian sound very similar to Norwegian
Who cares about your stupid terroristic language...
I've traced my ancestors back to place called Benteloo of frisan origin, my surname is near enough that of the place i mentioned. Love this video
I took German in high school, so once you read off how the words are constructed, I could easily understand it on the second go- around in every example. "Fan" is really a weird way to say "of", but if I were to learn a few prepositions and other words that are very different from English, it seems like an easy language for us native English-speakers.
I find mutual-intelligibility very fascinating, but I was only ever able to understand parts of Italian or French because of knowing English, a good bit of Spanish, and a tiny bit of German. However I wanted to hear a language that I could understand using very little training, so here I am. I do consider Scots its own language, so I will go there next!
I speak West Frysian and dutch at the same rate everyday. Most people from villages or rather small towns speak Frysian, while people from cities usually speak Dutch.
Its unfortunate because Frysian is seen as a 'Farmers' language by the younger generation, thus not cool and not worthy of learning.
I was like that aswell i have to admit. But now i admire my language and speak it with pride. FRYSLÂN BOPPE!
Kijk ik kom uit Bolsward en hier heb je veel mensen die Fries spreken in de regio maar ook veel Nederlanders die net niet spreken maar iedereen verstaat elkaar mijn beppe spreekt alleen maar Fries en ik amper maar ik versta haar wel heel gemakkelijk en inderdaad alle dorpeling spreken vloeiend Fries met elkaar
It's unfortunate it's not used in schools as the primary language. At this rate it won't survive too long
Luiz Matthew in Friesland you can do your end exam in Frisian and follow Frisian lessons so if you want to it’s possible
@@ps1hagrid268 But are other subjects such as maths, or history taught in Frisian, or is it just a Frisian language class
Luiz Matthew just a Frisian Language class
As a West-Frisian native, when I used to live in Fryslân, I only used Dutch in more formal settings and with people who did not speak it. I only learned Dutch at primary school though, so before people just had to decipher my Frisian. Now that I live across the provincial border in the neighboring region of Groningen, I use Dutch a lot more in daily life, but it's always great to be back in Fryslân and to be able to speak my mother tongue.
MoJean ik tink dat as jo my allinnich as Fries sjogge wolle as ik yn Fryslân wenje, dat mear oer jo as oer my seit 😉
Does knowing Frisian make it easier to become fluent in English than knowing, say, Dutch?
Wait, isn't Dutch also your mother tongue since you learned in pretty young?
@@pinguinobc Better in pronunciation my mom was Frisian. She passed away 10 years ago and we live in Australia. Australians understood her better than some British people.
@@TheManinBlack9054 I spoke Dutch for 15 years and English for 55 years. I regard myself as fully bi-lingual but Dutch is my mother tongue. Why? I can't put my finger on it. This April I go there for my last vacation. (The place is very expensive now) see how I get on. My aim is to fit in like a native. ;)
Mr. Paul, this is fascinating. I never thought to consider Frisian as comparable to English.
My grandmother only speaks Irish(Gaeilge). She's from Cíll Rónáin, Aran Islands. It's a small fishing village off the coast of Galway.
I remember my father talking to an old woman near the German-Danish border in 1964 in a language I, his The Hague born daughter, did not recognise: Frisian the language of his youth, that he had not actively spoken for thirty years.
That's so cool! I wonder if the old woman was a speaker of North Frisian, Low Saxon, German or Danish then..
@SabuPtolemy yep, that was a mistake
My girlfriend is from Schleswig-Holstein and speaks fluent Danish, German and Dutch. Believe me Frisian doesnt sound anything like Danish although some people teach this in the Netherlands. I heard people speak North Frisian over there, and i couldnt understand a thing and im a native west Frisian speaker.
Jurre van der Pal Mijn vader, geboren in de buurt van Drachten in 1912, en die oude vrouw spraken die zomer 55 jaar geleden toch echt elk hun Fries en verstonden elkaar prima.
@@jurrevanderpal2972 @MultiMorgenster de één heeft er een beter oor voor dan de ander :)
I'm actually the only student in my class who's studying Western Frisian.
Wait how could i do that
Goed voor niks
Multorum Unum ohhhh I see
I'm a native English speaker, currently studying Dutch at the A1 level, almost at A2. Frisian seems very similar to Dutch, closer than English even but I'm not qualified to make that call. What I can say is that as the only native English speaker in my Dutch class, I have a way easier time picking it up than anyone else. It just kinda makes sense to me, which I can tell is very much not the case with others. I know it's still early and advanced Dutch grammar is very funky, but I really do feel like I have a big advantage.
Very cool to hear Friesian spoken again. Haven't heard it much since my mother passed.
I'm a Frisian myself and quite proud of it too. I grew up in this small village in the north, close to Dokkum. In my village we had a school with teacher's on it telling us children that we weren't allowed to speak Frisian in school, which confused me quite a lot. I don't remember listening to them, and the other students also didn't listen (thankfully.)
But as I got older I noticed that a some of the Dutch people (online but also irl) have a hatred for the Frisian language. Telling us it's not a real language and that it should disappear from the country. It pissed me off obviously, but I just asked them why? The reason they give me was: "Frisia is part of The Netherlands, and in the Netherlands we speak Dutch. So we should speak it too." Did anyone had a similar thing happen to them?
It always makes me happy to hear that there are people who are interested in the Frisian language. Even trying to learn it themselves!! #Respecttt 😋
Ori Banana that’s sad. keep speaking frisian fuck the haters
How idiotic to have a 'hatred for the Frisian language'. That is beyond contempt, just like Turkey banning the use of the Kurdish language,
@@nickwyatt3243 I know right? I just don't understand why people are being so difficult about these things. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Ik heb nog nooit iemand ontmoet in mijn hele randstad leven die iets negatiefs heeft gezegd over Fries of Friesland.
It's similar here in Spain. Although I don't speak any of this lenguages: Basque, Catalan and Galician, in the past, they didn't speak them at school... But now I think it's a mandatory subject in schools there and I'm pretty sure most of the subjects are in that lenguages.
Native Frisian here. I work in optical retail and about 2 out of 3 of my customers speak Frisian and all my colleagues speak it as well. It's normal to greet a new customer in Frisian and based on the language of their reply I will keep talking in Frisian or immediately switch to Dutch instead. English is the third most spoken language and in summertime I will switch it up with a little bit of German from time to time.
The West Frisian language has changed a little over the past decades of my life because of the influence of the Dutch language. Frisian words are more often replaced by Dutch words and Stedfrysk (City Frisian) is gaining ground over more pure dialects such as Wâldfrysk or Klaaifrysk. Younger Frisians also adopted the Dutch sentence structure when it comes to the verbs but will be reminded by older Frisians that they're putting the verbs in the wrong order i.e. putting the modal verb in front of the action verb.
wait you speak FOUR languages? sucks that america so so big and our neighboring country speaks english too. whereas you have so many countries easier to get to it just makes sense to learn more from a young age
I'm in optical retail but I don't speak Frisian, Dutch, nor German to any of my customers. Texican and Texan English, mainly, unless they want to speak Yank. I'll usually oblige.
I speak Frisian (mixed with city Frisian as mentioned by Henk as I didn't learn it as a child I grew up in the city), Dutch (native), English (I'd say about 95% fluently but with an accent), German (worked for a German company for 14 years) and a little bit of French (I understand most of it but struggle to form meaningful sentences).
im so happy im back watching langfocus again. I used to watch all the time years ago, and it somehow disappeared. made my night that it was suddenly recommended again. thanks youtube algorithm
I’m glad you’re back! Don’t rely on the algorithms. I have been making videos the whole time. If you look at my channel page and click on “videos” you can see all my videos. These days it seems like people wait for CZcams to recommend things to them rather than checking the channel pages of channels they like.
As a Dutch non-speaker of Frisian I did study the language a bit and to my surprise that helped me (a lot!) when I first tried reading Beowulf.
Nederland ?
@@user-ok9dc5qt8d Yes, Friesland is a Dutch province. The area where Frisian was spoken was much bigger in the past.
@@baldiedabeast7576 Most people will love to speak English with you, so it might be hard getting any practice done if you want to learn Dutch. Learning any language is fun and Dutch is no different, but in the Netherlands most people speak English and a lot of them very well.
IIRC, Beowulf was written in Old English, which was much closer to Frisian. English got heavily influenced by Norman French after the Norman Conquest.
This sounds exactly like afrikaans. I could understand everything!! Wow!!
Which is funny, as Afrikaans is based on the dialects of Zeeland and Zuid-Holland in the southwest of the country
Barely sounds like it... maybe a word or two
Maybe because africaans is a mix/ influenced by Dutch and English
I thought so too, being native SA English speaker but taught 2nd language Afrikaans, much of Frisian is intelligible.
@@felixyoghurt3291 If you know both English and Dutch you will of course be able to get a lot of Frisian.
It's a pleasant sounding language!
This is such a cool and informative channel. Glad I found it.
thanks for this video! as someone who lives in indonesia the only times i've heard about frisian is the frisian flag, my favorite condensed milk. it's interesting to learn about the language since it's rarely known here, and the links it has to other languages. and it seems i can understand a bit of frisian, cause i can speak english and ein bisschen deutsch, and putting two and two together with the dutch words. i will learn this language someday :D
I would like to see a video about Low German and how it is compared to standard German and other Germanic languages!
I'm a native west-frisian dutch speaker, a dialect spoken in north holland geographically and linguistically between dutch and frisian. It never ceases to amaze me that we've got this rich linguistic landscape on such a small stretch of land. Thank you for making this video Paul!
Correction: It never ceases to amaze me ...
I speak English, German and Korean and this language is fascinating to listen to. After watching this video I watched a few Native Frisian speakers just speaking it naturally and I was astounded at how much is sounds tonally, phonetically and metrically like English.
Can you recommend some of this videos? I speak English and German.
Seems to me English people would be able to understand quite a bit of spoken West Friesian, even now, and a few hundred years ago probably even more.
+H0urg1ass cool, I dream those too! Think knowing English and German or Dutch would make Frisian easy to learn
I once spent a day in Northern Germany with a host who spoke only North Frisian. It is similar enough to English that we were able to carry on normal conversation all day, with just some occasional repeats or rephrasing to clarify sometimes. It was helpful that I had previously spent some time in Scotland and that I knew just a little bit of German, because a lot of the differences of Frisian from English resemble the way it would be said in Scots or German.
It really sounds like a language I would have made up when I was younger and only familiar with English syntax. The structure is so similar.
I'm fascinated by different languages bein comprehensible. You joke that scottish is just an accent, but norwegian and swedish are only a bit less similar than American English and Scottish English (I am guessing)
He said Scots, not just a Scottish accent. Norwegian and Swedish are more similar to each other than American English and Scots are.
The major differences between Swedish and Norwegian is pronunciation and some old Germanic vocabulary that Norway seems to be very attached to. Swedish is closer to English and German in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation
@@senbonzakurakageyoshi662 How is Swedish pronunciation closer to German and English?
@@jerrytoonsz665 ja
@@dan74695 that's what I mean. yes
So my Dutch cousin married a Fries woman. At ther wedding her brother had a slide show narrated in Fries. I was astonished at how easily I understood it and how it fit in so beautifully. It was like you could start with German, go to Dutch, then Fries, Scottish & English. It fit the gap between Dutch and Scottish dipthongs perfectly.
(Regarding some other comments I've seen, some Dutch accuse the Frisians of being haughty & having superiority complexes, then use that as an excuse to put them down. I think they are trying to defend their distinct language & culture while necessarily being part of a larger country. You cannot make people understand who do not have in depth understanding of English.)
I speak Frisian at home and with friends. One weird thing I've noticed is that many people who speak Frisian, but met in Dutch, will stick to speaking Dutch as they find it uncomfortable to switch at that point.
That's a normal thing. When two people met in a certain language, it automatically gets established as the mutual communication language, and it's very hard to change.
It happens to me too with Spanish and Basque, so even though I try to communicate in Basque to people who also speak it, it feels sort of awkward if our previous conversations have been in Spanish
I mean Dutch is already very similar to Frisian but basque is a completely unique, mysterious language that doesn’t really seem to be connected to any other language
I've noticed this with everyone I know... Even speaking 3 of the same languages, you tend to keep a relationship in the language you started as... Even if you two aren't using either of each other's native tongue hahaha
I once met a couple from Barcelona that only spoke to each other in Spanish and never in Catalan for exactly this reason!
I (American) lived in northern Germany for a few years, and used a shortwave radio to scan regional broadcasts. Found a Frisian radio channel and, yep! That's pretty close to hearing very Olde English maybe a thousand years ago. Just switch off your mind and it almost makes sense. ;-)
Omrop Fryslan!
Technically,I find that hard to believe. Regional radios usually transmit in the FM-band (sometimes called VHF) between 87.5 and 108 MHz. *Shortwave* transmissions can usually be heard up to a few dozen miles from the transmitter, and then again from over a few hundred kilometers away
@@ronaldonmg Sorry, but the man is right. There are a lot of 'secret / illegal stations'' broadcasting in that region.
@@rypkepaulusma I know that pirate-radio exists. It's just that most shortwaves from Friesland - weird athmospherique conditions aside - will "skip" (the western part of ) northern Germany
American English is my native language but I can understand spoken Czech very well because my dad's side of the family is from there but I can't speak it myself. Also I learned about two years of German. Frisian just sounds German to me but it's easier to decipher than German when spoken.
Frisian sounds a lot like Synnejysk which is a semi recognized language in southern Denmark and northern Germany, and a combination of the 2. A lot of Frisian is intelligible to Danish in the same way that English is. Lots of "close enough" words that you can tell the meaning by even if you don't know the exact translation. The grammar structure is also not too far off Danish pre the 1960's when that was a more formal language, like German and dutch are today. "Lezen" in so close to the Synnejysk "Lesen"
Many years ago, I was in a riverside pub in Newcastle (northern England), when I became aware of a loud conversation nearby. Turns out it was between some Geordies (Newcastle locals) and Frisian trawlermen; they seemed to have no difficulty communicating (over a few pints) in their own languges! Having said that, some from other parts of England would find the Geordies speaking a foreign language!
Regards, Mike
That must be quite comical to hear. A friesan trawlerman and a Geordie meet in a pub.