Frisian: Forgotten Sister Language

[@JacksonCrawford]

For more content on Germanic languages on the continent, see this great interview on Old Saxon: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l3-YaqNveqaijbM

[@historywithhilbert]

Forgotten, eh?

[@Colinop]

Hilbert!!! 🗣️🗣️

[@lukefriesenhahn8186]

You're here! Hurrah!

[@bombermanguy8888]

The majority of the west-coast in the Netherlands used to speak (old) Frisian or a related dialect. Dutch gradually replaced it as the medieval period went on, until it finally died out in the 17th century (the last place where it was spoken was north of Amsterdam in North-Holland). A lot of traces of this can be found in the traditional Dutch dialects of the area and placenames, especially in North-Holland (where there's even a region that is still called 'West-Friesland'). It's probably also how some North Sea Germanic traits got into standard Dutch. There's only some loose words and one known piece of text written in this Hollandic Frisian and it's apparently quite different from the Frisian that was spoken in the Friesland province at the time

[@arwenwestrop5404]

Hi, back in the seventies a native Frisian friend of mine had invited some Scottish friends of hers to her home in Friesland. Her parents only spoke Friesian - with a tiny smattering of Dutch - and her friends spoke both English and Scottish - not the Gealic but Scottish. So my friend was concerned as to how her parents and her friends would communicate. That problem was solved in less than 5 minutes. The parents spoke Friesian, the Scottish friends spoke Scottish and they understood each other perfectly! My friend spoke Friesian, Dutch and English like native,so she could help out at the very occasional moments when parents and friends weren't quite sure they understood each other correctly, but those moment were rare and grew less as time went on. Fun!

[@psikodelriot6754]

yes. The ratio of old frisian/frisian loanwords and borrowed terms in english and scottish is very high. Also in dutch. Your scottish friends spoke anglo frisian, what is good understandable in modern frisian, english and dutch.

[@talideon]

It's best to use the term "Scots" when referring to the language. "Scottish" is ambiguous as Scotland is home to multiple languages.

[@demi3115]

There is an Old Frisian Summer School ever other year at Oxford, for those who are interested in studying it :)

[@GrutteKlier]

Thank you Jackson! As being a Friesian myself and loving the language and speaking it every day, the current Friesian language doesn't sound as the old Friesian anymore. My introduction to old Friesian came from the old manuscript "Oera Linda" some say it's a fake manuscript but the story is really great!

[@rienksjoerdsma]

Moaie namme LOL

[@Xanomodu]

The Oera Linda is a fake and it's not really Old Frisian

[@GrutteKlier]

@@Xanomodu That really depends on who you ask, have you ever tried to read the whole story? In my opinion it is way too elaborate to be a joke or a fake manuscript, and even if it is fake we can learn a lot from it nowadays.

[@elskewietzes9963]

@@GrutteKlier I read it a long time ago and I agree with Goffe Jensma's (Emeritus Professor of Frisian Language and Literature) vision. It's a mystification, written as a joke by clever writers. Goffe Jensma wrote a thesis on the Oera Linda Book and received his doctorate on it. The language is not Old Frisian, because there are also Dutch, German, French, English, modern Frisian and Stêdske words in the book. And the paper was examined too and it turned out to be from the 19th century. What we can learn from it: That some people have a lot of imagination and that the writers had a lot of fun while writing the book! 😉

[@GrutteKlier]

@@elskewietzes9963 I know about Jensma's vision about the book and as far as I know he is the only one really examining the book. I still think that if it was written as a joke that they did a very good job! As for the dating of the paper, they examined it a long time ago and a new testing of the paper is not allowed as far as I know. I absolutely think there is more to the mystery of the Oera Linda, or maybe I'm just a gullible fool. Wa sil it sizze.....

[@TheAntiburglar]

As an American living in Aberdeen in Scotland, I can confidently say that Scots is *definitely* worthy of being considered its own language. It's super cool, but I'll be damned if I can understand even a bit of it at normal speed lol

[@joebarrera334]

Yeah I found it interesting he essentially used Scots and Scottish English interchangeably. I guess like all languages they exist on a spectrum

[@bencampbell5468]

I would disagree, and would consider it a dialect. I grew up partly in rural northern England and the accents of many of the local farmers were completely incomprehensible to anyone not from the area, and that is often not even considered different enough to be a dialect (which it probably really should be.) Scots on the other hand is aside from a handful of words and phrasing essentially just English with a Scottish accent. People casually move between the two with no noticeable divide. I think the general idea of Scots as a separate language is largely an optimistically romantic notion by certain Scottish nationalists who wish to think themselves more separate from the English than they really are.

[@paradoxmo]

Linguistically, Broad Scots and Modern English diverged during the Middle English period, so it’s more accurate to say they’re sister languages rather than Scots being a dialect of modern English. It is a “dialect” of “English” if you include Middle English in your concept of English. The fact that it’s mutually intelligible isn’t really the determining factor, for example in Latin America many people can mutually understand Latin American Spanish dialects and Brazilian Portuguese, but no one calls them the same language just because of mutual intelligibility. The fluid movement between Broad Scots and Scottish English is just a kind of code-switching since it’s a largely bilingual community.

[@bobdobsin6216]

@@bencampbell5468 I am an american living in america, and have never been to scotland. But I have always been told that it was a dialect, and despite the incomprehensible phonology, I don't have the impression the grammar is that different. I guess what I want to know is "when does a dialect become a different language?" I doubt there's any sort of linguistic consensus for such a definition, but surely there's some agreed upon milestones that a dialect should pass before people would agree "yeah, that's probably different enough to be its own language."

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@bencampbell5468 if you're thinking it's just English with a Scottish accent, you probably weren't listening to Scots but rather Scottish English. They're different things

[@rienksjoerdsma]

I love that when you, History with Hilbert or anyone else talks about Frisian, a bunch of Frisians (including myself) just suddenly appear.

[@historywithhilbert]

Sa is 't mar krekt, ja!

[@rienksjoerdsma]

@@historywithhilbert The legend himself!

[@Frahamen]

As a native speaker of Dutch with some experience with Frisian, West Frisian, by far the most spoken variety of modern Frisian, I can say that in a historical sense Frisian might be closer to English, but in a practical sense bast on vocabulary and grammar, it's far more mutually ineligible for Dutch speakers than Anglophones.

[@rienksjoerdsma]

I think because of the influence that Dutch and German have had due to their proximity, modern Frisian has adopted a lot of elements from those languages.

[@elskewietzes9963]

@@ConontheBinarian There are still a lot of similarities between Frisian and English. Some examples F/E: dei/day, kaai/key, efter/after, doar/door, swiet/sweet, ús/us, tsjerke/church, dea/dead, sliepe/to sleep, troch/through, tinke/to think, tsiis/cheese, beside/beside, grien/green, goes/goose, brea/bread, jier/year, read/red, churn-tsjerne. I could go on! 😅

[@AsaTJ522]

I think this is definitely true just because English was so heavily Normanized. If William had lost, Frisian and English might still be fairly mutually intelligible.

[@elskewietzes9963]

@@ConontheBinarian Go for it haha! My mother tongue is Frisian and I speak it every day. Dutch is my second language. As a speaker of both Frisian and Dutch, I can say that Frisian is closer to English than it is to Dutch. Even though the languages aren't (completely) mutually intelligible anymore.

[@demi3115]

Modern Frisian has a LOT of dutch influence.

[@snorrebjorkson2294]

I speak Low German very well and also know Frisian and Scandinavian in addition to school English. What strikes me is that the more you include dialects and older forms, the less it is possible to recognize clear language boundaries within Germanic. They are probably only the result of later political developments. Frisian did not become its own national language, which is a shame. It acts like a link between Low German, English and Scandinavian.

[@herrbonk3635]

How much does it differ from Low German? Can you give a few examples?

[@snorrebjorkson2294]

@@tbott1061 There are linguistic studies that during the Hanseatic period, Low German and Swedish were mutually intelligible at a basic level in specific areas, for example trade. Today all Scandinavian languages ​​show great Low German influence. You also have to look at the situation from the perspective of Standard German. Seen from there, Low German and Frisian seem like a bridge to Scandinavia. The grammar is similar, the High German sound shift did not take place. Frisian dialects also have old Germanic words that have disappeared in German, such as "barn" for "child".

[@heirwolf6929]

Modern Swedish still uses "icke" in some cases , meaning no, not or non, depending on context. It is a bit archaic though.

[@benitoharrycollmann132]

I recently watched a clip on KZbin, though i cant remember the source from which it was taken, where a Brit who speaks Old English went to the Netherlands and tried to communicate with a Dutchman speaking Frisian. Though they couldnt 100% understand one another, they understood enough of each others language for the Brit to purchase a brown cow from the Dutchman. Thanks for another awesome video, Dr. Crawford! Always a good day when you upload

[@joebarrera334]

You're probably referring to the video where Eddie Izzard speaks "Old English" to a West Frisian farmer. The channel History with Hilbert does a good breakdown of the video. Long story short, Eddie's OE is pretty rough and the farmer doesn't fully understand that Eddie wants to *buy* a brown cow. The reason being: the word in W. Frisian for "to buy" is "kapje" or something, which looks to be cognate with German "kaufen," that is, not at all like the OE word for "to buy," which looks, more or less, like the Modern English word.

[@phillipsiebold8351]

@@joebarrera334 The closest word is to cheapen a cow, which is. . . odd. It can work in . . . some contexts. Especially if you are doing cow worship, which I don't think Germanic tribes did much of.

[@joebarrera334]

@@phillipsiebold8351 yeah that's pointed out in the video i mentioned. Talk about semantic drift haha! I also wonder if the verb "to cop" is cognate.

[@egbront1506]

@@joebarrera334 Haven't seen the Izzard video but I do know that the fairly common name Chapman is basically the same as German Kaufmann.

[@onurbschrednei4569]

@@joebarrera334 the Frisian word seems to be a loan word then. Frisian, like English, usually transforms the K at the beginning into a ts (pronounced like ch). So you would expect something more like "tsapje" I think.

[@andreasstolcke6801]

About the -(e)r plural: it is also preserved in modern High German, e.g. Haus / Häuser, Land /Länder, but of course it is no longer productive and relatively infrequent among the several plural formation patterns in the language. It would be interesting to hear more about the development of plural forms across Germanic! Really enjoy your videos!

[@yum2735]

German -er is not directly related to English -s or Danish -er (from Proto-Germanic a-stem masculine nouns ending in *-ōs/*-ōz in the plural). Instead it is derived from Proto-Germanic z-stem neuter nouns ending in *-izō in the plural, a very small group of nouns. This plural suffix also became -er in English and still existed in Early Modern English for words like child (plural childer). In Modern English it is fossilized in "children" with an additional -en plural ending and some English dialects still use the form "childer" to this day. Now, whether German -s (or Dutch, Frisian, Low German, even Swedish -s for that matter) is related to English -s one way or another is a highly controversial topic. I personally think that it is primarily derived from genitive singular constructions in all of these languages rather than a continuation of Proto-Germanic *-ōs/*-ōz.

[@LillyHolgersson-hd7mj]

Wow, that‘s sooo interesting! How did genitive singular -s become a plural form? Super curious!

[@hbowman108]

I've heard the easiest language for an English speaker to learn (other, of course, than Scots and Tok Pisin, which are arguably dialects of English) is Afrikaans. The reason for this is that Dutch evolved in parallel with English in the medieval period because of rule by a French-speaking nobility and that the emergence of Afrikaans from Dutch resulted in an almost complete loss of inflections. Afrikaans has no grammatical gender, no declensions, no conjugations, and a simplified system of verb tenses which is almost entirely regular. Since it emerged, Afrikaans has had two centuries of heavy exposure to English and a large fraction of the modern speakers are bilingual in English.

[@bobhemphut4011]

That being said growing up with English as primary and learning French and Spanish... hard to understand people speaking those languages conversationally. French would be my best because of study and cultural heritage, but still difficult to fully comprehend.

[@JarkkoHietaniemi]

I have to doubt the ease of Tok Pisin though. While initial basic vocabulary of course was formed from English, the grammar is completely not (therefore it is arguably not a dialect of English), and the vocabulary has evolved a lot, gaining new words from the surrounding languages, which are strongly non-IE.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Mi save liklik long tok Pisin. Husat man i tok Inglis tasol i no ken harim tok olsem "Dispela man i kisim kaikai long diwai na i amamas" o "Long ples bodi bilong daiman i stap, ol taragau i save kam bung". The second quotation is from the New Testament; if you know only English, the only way you can figure out the second half is by recognizing the first.

[@hbowman108]

Vocabulary is always the most difficult part about a close relative of English. We forget that we know a lot of Scots words. A good example of a variety that is unfamiliar can be seen in GGG's videos in Liberian Coloqua. It's pretty hard even though some of the oddities may be recognizable as very old-fashioned African-American English.

[@taivo55]

@@JarkkoHietaniemi Just the pronouns of Tok Pisin are hard for English speakers to master: singular, dual, trial, and plural numbers, plus inclusive and exclusive first person non-singular

[@flightsoffancy9722]

Thank you for this. My Dutch grandmother, who came to the US from a town in Groeningen, spoke some Frisian but I haven't learned much about it till recently.

[@berndf0]

If you compare Old Frisian to North Germanic languages and Old High German, then Old Frisian is of course the closest relative to Old English. But if you add Old Saxon to the comparison, the other big contributor to Old English (before Old North influence in the time of tge Danelaw) besides Anglian (which was probably the language closed related to Frisian), then things look a bit different. Old English is roughly equally closely related to Old Frisian and Old Saxon.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

English doesn't come from old Saxon. English and old Frisian share more features than old English than old Saxon, check out 'The fall of Man' in Sahsisk(old Saxon) and Englisc(old English.

[@berndf0]

@@redwaldcuthberting7195 What is that supposed to prove? That the Old Saxon text and its Old English translation were distinct languages? Of course. Old English is a blend of Saxon and Anglian and possibly other West Germanic dialects from the area that is now NW Germany and mainland Denmark. The Anglian components are those that are closer to Frisian. The Old Saxon text on the other hand was written after the Frankish conquest and exhibited already High German influence.

[@onurbschrednei4569]

AFAIK Low German has lost many of the features that it had in common with English due to the heavy High German and dutch influence.

[@berndf0]

@@onurbschrednei4569 Sure. Middle Low German and even more so Modern Low German has taken a lot if High German and Dutch influence depending on variety of Low German (for which today there is no common standard). As much as Modern English is so very different from Old English, Modern Low German is very different from Old Saxon.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

@@berndf0 old English doesn't come from old Saxon they common from common west Germanic, Saxon that stayed on the continent became sahsisk(old Saxon), and the common west Germanic that went to Britain became old English, no true linguist would say old Saxon is the ancestor of Ænglisc. English and Frisian form a subgroup called Anglo-Frisian and shared many features old Saxon does not. Old Saxon isn't the ancestor of English. Old Saxon (or Old Low German) probably evolved primarily from Ingvaeonic dialects in the West Germanic branch of Proto-Germanic in the 5th century. However, Old Saxon, even considered as an Ingvaeonic language, is not a pure Ingvaeonic dialect like Old Frisian and Old English, the latter two sharing some other Ingvaeonic characteristics, which Old Saxon lacked.

[@morvil73]

East Frisian didn’t switch to German but rather Low Saxon or Low German and is the area today where Low Saxon with an East Frisian substrate is the most vital in Germany, where intergenerational transmission still occurs, only after this Frisian to Low Saxon switch came the switch to Standard German in the latter half of the 20th century.

[@MajorBookworm100]

18:15 I wonder if the "hiu" and "heo" as feminine personal pronouns is linked to the impersonal(?) form "her"?

[@gavinrogers5246]

I find Old Frisian in particular fascinating because I somehow can read it easier than Old English despite having training in the latter but not the former. I had to use the Old Frisian law codes dealing with piracy for a project I was doing and had very little problem understanding it in written form (now if a native speaker was reading them aloud, it might be an entirely different matter). I have a feeling that most of you might be able to figure out the following: Thet was thet fiarde bod: Thu skalt êrja thînne feder and thîne môder, thet tu theste langer libbe.

[@faramund9865]

I’m Dutch so it feels like cheating. But yeah. “Dat was het vierde gebod. Je zult eren je vader en je moeder. Dat je deste langer leeft”. The only really weird thing about Dutch je which is the same as English you, taken from the plural, it was a polite form.

[@gavinrogers5246]

@@faramund9865 tu/ Thu are the polite forms as well similar to the Middle English thou.

[@morvil73]

@@gavinrogers5246The other way round… thou was the familiar form and the polite/plural you took over.

[@gavinrogers5246]

@@morvil73 that was the singular thou and the plural ye. In Old English there were two forms þu and eow (I believe eow could be singular or collective).

[@faramund9865]

@@gavinrogers5246 Well, thu, thou or whatever is the original common form actually. To English listeners it just sounds fancy because it's old. Still found in many Germanic tongues. But you has come into use because it is a plural, which is much fancier (more respectful).

[@LeoPlaw]

East Frisian is referred to as Plattdeutsch (flat German) in Germany. I've been told by people who grew up in that region, that people (pre-war generations) either side of the Dutch German border thought of themselves as Frisian first, and Dutch and German second, if at all.

[@Matt_The_Hugenot]

As an Englishman I definitely class Scots as a separate from to English, the language of Hugh MacDiarmid is not that of Sylvia Plath.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

Lowland Scots used to be called Inglis ie English. They seemed to have dropped the 'h' in ish' as Scottish was/is Scottis. Variant spellings of 'English' in Middle English. Englisch, Englysshe, Englyssh, Englysch, Englysche, Englissh, English, Inglisch, Engliss, Anglisch, Ænglisce, Ennglissh. Scots is said to be from Middle English.

[@faithlesshound5621]

Hugh MacDiarmid and his like artificially constructed "Lallans" (= Lowlands) to rebuild the glories of Middle Scots letters in our time. It's not the same as "Ulster Scots" which Orangemen use for public notices in Northern Ireland as a counter to the use of Irish by the Nationalist community. Lallans and Scots Gaelic have no religious affiliation.

[@UnshavenStatue]

As an American I classify modern glaswegian as a separate damn language good god

[@theeurasiaproject8497]

The dual explains why evil tongues across the border used to claim that Frisians only could count to two. Thanx.

[@svenkaahedgerg3425]

Thank you for discussing the Frisian link. I started asking about this a couple of years ago when I searched for "the missing piece" between old Norse, Anglian, Saxon and old English

[@svenkaahedgerg3425]

@@tbott1061 If you follow the coast from western Denmark to Calais then cross the channel, Frisland is the last link in the chain: Old Norse - Danemark (Jutland), Angeln - Anglian, Saxony - Saxon, Frisland - Frisian, England - old English

[@svenkaahedgerg3425]

@@tbott1061 the way I see it is concurrent: Jutish, Danish, Anglian, Saxon and Frisian were all versions of the same language. This language crossed the channel. Then it met with old Norse again after a few hundred years, and mixed a second time, when the Vikings came.

[@alysmarcus7747]

wow - thankyou so much for this. my family up north spoke a couple of dialects that didn't 'quite fit' into the german i was taught in school - i will look for that book

[@psikodelriot6754]

Here in the north of Brandenburg (Germany), we still have our "markish accent". It´s like an etymological Esperanto to gothic, norse, frisian, old english and others. "Mark" means "border", wich was the border between nether and high german .

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

Mearc in old English, from PWG *Marku.

[@OliverHarris1]

@@redwaldcuthberting7195 As in 'Mercia'!

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

​@@OliverHarris1 Mercia was mierce 'mee-ertcheh' in old English, Mierce is from Mearc' mey-ark' it was also called Merce and myrce, those forms are palatalized with a ch sound, and there's one unpalatized name mearce with a 'k' sound.

[@erichamilton3373]

These areas were the Frankish Empire's marches---border lands into Slavic areas...nothing to do with low/high German

[@marchauchler1622]

Usually a "mark" marks the border of a germanic and non Germanic speaking territory

[@angelikalindenau943]

I had a beautiful LP - remember those? - by Knut Kiesewetter in Frisian. You egged me on to go digging!

[@kimfleury]

I had asked about it because 40 years ago I read the autobiography of Charles Berlitz, of the famous "Language Family." They were known for being multi-lingual and teaching languages through the method they developed, known as "The Berlitz Method." For some reason, Charles mentioned the similarities between modern English and Frisian. He gave the exempt, "Good butter and good cheese is good English and good Fries."

[@DenStoreLaffen]

Faroese have a huge frisian part of their history that is often understated. It may explain some of their rampant innovation on skerping too

[@patchy642]

Isle of Tenerife, Spain, Africa. An excellent video! Very informative. Thank you very much, and thank you for presenting it all in normal, everyday, colloquial English. Except. . . . . .the sound you made (a stifled sneeze?) or the word you said (a foreign language?) towards the very end: Visservee, it sounded like to me. Best wishes, Patchy.

[@juliusmalcovsky4092]

To be honest I was never super interested in languages or learning the grammar details etc .. but I must admit that you are able to tell it in a way that I just cant stop listening to :) Thank you for the effort and the videos you share.

[@little-wytch]

Have you ever seen the Eddie Izzard video about speaking Old English to a Frisian farmer? It's not nearly as scientific, but it's still quite interesting.

[@erichimes3062]

😁my dude took a break from repairing barbed wire on the ranch to chop up some linguistics!

[@martijnkingma3256]

Great video! As a Frisian linguist I often wonder whether the dating of the Old Frisian manuscripts as a whole entity is reliable. I feel that perhaps texts like the 21 landrights may have been in a manuscript that is dated to be from 1300 is likely to have been copied from a previous text from say 1200, and then the Magnus story from a text from 1100, but they still end up in the same manuscript and the language in that book then represents different eras.

[@svenkaahedgerg3425]

Old Frisian 'sin' is still used in Swedish. 'sin bok' - one's/his/her book. Is that from old Norse 'sinn'?

[@Weda01]

We still use the word in modern West-Frisian, the only thing that has changed is we spell it with the letter "Y" ("syn") instead of an "I" ("sin"). The word is also pretty close to the Dutch word "zijn" or German "sein". English is probably the only Germanic language to my knowledge that doesn't use a similair word.

[@svenkaahedgerg3425]

@@Weda01 Thank you. I'm very grateful for the information.

[@YourCreepyUncle.]

@@Weda01 Old English still had "sin", while "sind" survived into Middle English. But yeah, there are no real modern descendants left.

[@Man_of_dirt]

Tankewol myn freon!

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

if Frisian friend was friond/friund then freon is superficially similar to old English freond, although being cognates the 'eo' form in West Frisian is said to be from old Frisian friond. What you wrote looks like 'thank-well, my friend' if rendered literally in English. Freond was the West Saxon English form and Friond was used elsewhere in Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish dialects.

[@rogersittnikow]

Cool, I understood that without translation, without only rudimentary knowledge of Dutch and no prior knowledge of Frisian.

[@Man_of_dirt]

@@redwaldcuthberting7195 the saxons who invaded England came through Frisia, most likely on Frisian ships, also Ubbo’s portion of the great heathen army was Frisian, frisians in early England is a neglected subject

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

@@Man_of_dirt I heard 'the old Frisians disappeared and angles and Saxons too their place essentially becoming the new Frisians. Names like Friston and Frisby( Norse 'byr' here) in England indicate te presence of Frisians and there was quite a close bond between the Englisc and Frysisc. I think the Angles and Saxon becoming the 'new Frisians' also lends a closeness between the two languages historically. I don't know about the 'great heathen army' being lead by Ubba being mostly frysisc though.

[@Man_of_dirt]

@@redwaldcuthberting7195 the old frisians disappeared? Or the sea pushed them inland?

[@theeddorian]

I had a calculus professor in the 1970s who was proud of his Frisian descent and ability to speak it. He made the point about being close to English.

[@iceomistar4302]

I see you read Rolf Bremmer's An Introduction to Old Frisian too? I love his work

[@d.d.lucier3200]

Nice explanation of the etymology of this language. Maybe I'm the only one but I find it interesting that Jackson pronounces Frisian as Frissian with an emphasis on the i and s sounds; my Frisian family said it with a long e sound...Fresian or Fresk or Fres. We were a West Frisian family though, so maybe it's pronounced differently elsewhere. Lots of differences in lots of areas - including languages!

[@OliverHarris1]

Is it true that speakers of the three modern Frisian languages can't really understand each other? Or only with a lot of difficulty, let's say.

[@user-gj1np9rp4d]

The modern English word "Frisian" is actually French influenced. The -ian part is from Latin -iānus. The old English word for "Frisian" was "Frysisc" which would have became "Frish" has it survived.

[@rogersittnikow]

Maybe this common linguistics ancestry is why I've noticed that some Norwegians and some Dutch have an almost identical accent when they speak English.

[@rogersittnikow]

@@Bjowolf2 Danes and correct pronunciation is some what of an oxymoron 😆

[@Oinnelstan]

Ƿes hal. I thought the OE word for "bright" is beorht*. * Henry Sweet: The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. Either way, my Son and I had a quick look at Old Frisian and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to recognise and comprehend, given my rudimentary, beginner level OE skills.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

Old English also had briht said bricht hence the silent h(ch)>gh in New English bright, so he may have slipped up using bright instead of briht. The 'bricht' pronunciation survives in Lowland Scots. Like worhte and wriht>wright, also wricht in Lowland Scots.

[@onurbschrednei4569]

@@redwaldcuthberting7195 Cool! The "brecht" part has also survived in a lot of German names. For example the High German forms of the English names Albert and Robert are Albrecht and Ruprecht.

[@Cruuzie]

Very interesting video! Scots really deserves its own video just like this one too.

[@lhpl]

I was born and grew up just north of Flensburg, and my first language was the Southern Jutlandic Danish dialect. It is distinct from other Jutlandic dialects in some ways, and I have often wondered to what extent these differences were caused by German influences, and also if maybe there are some remains from earlier languages in the region, which I believe was part of the original Angel, where the Angles migrated from. Although Frisians afaik are nearly or completely nonexistent as a minority in Denmark today, they used to live on the west coast of Jutland, maybe as far up as Ribe? I noted the mention of "ship", which in Danish is "skib", and I believe other Jutlandic dialects have "skiw", but Southern Jutlandic has "skiff". I suppose this is a complicated matter, as not only were the Angles and Jutes more or less replaced by Danes, but then there probably was a lot of (low)German and very likely also Frisian influence, and from 1864-1920 of course an even stronger (high)German influence (or pressure, thanks to Bismarck.)

[@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie]

Moin. In South Jylland they don't speak Danish. they speak Sønderjysk. and that is in the same language family as Anglo-Danish. 😀

[@lhpl]

@@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie was that a recap of my comment, or what was your point?

[@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie]

@@lhpl Read it again

[@lhpl]

@@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie I already did. You seem to be saying that South Jutlandic is not a Danish dialect, which is nonsense. Also, you appear to be trying to tell _me_ what language I _speak_ and have spoken as my first language, which is rather silly. Moin moin. (Btw "moin" is a fairly recent greeting, and probably of Saxon or Low German origin, although in modern times it has become common in Southern Jutland.) As I apparently can't get my comment to the last one by "Bodie" to show up, I'll put it here: My ego does not come into the equation; if you can provide credible evidence for your claim, I can change my mind. Not that there is much danger of that. Meanwhile, I have plenty of references stating that Jutlandic (which includes Southern Jutlandic), is a Danish dialect. Including sprogetDOTdk: "Danske dialekter er forskellige varianter af det danske sprog." Now, it's your turn: provide a reference, or ST-F-U and stick your long finger in your mouth or the other fitting orifice, if you even know which is which, as it probably makes no difference in your case.

[@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie]

@@lhpl Moin. i don't seem to tell you that. it is another language. not a Danish dialect. and from Sønderjyst there are many dialects. Anglo-Danish is one of them. that even was used in Norway & Sweden. learn how to get over your own ego. 🖕

[@jimmyntee]

Languages at any point in time seem to be snapshots of a moving sand influenced by so many factors that never cease to impart a shaping influence. One wonders what Jackson would enunciate about the influences on English in another 500 years.

[@robertfaucher3750]

Ah I have been interested in this topic! However I've found the information on Saterland Frisian lacking.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

Can you do a vid on Anglic tongues in Ireland like Yola?

[@CannedMan]

12:49: And the diphthongised form is like modern Norwegian (except without the doubled n): _ein stein, fleire steinar._

[@andrew_owens7680]

I'm currently studying Dutch and trying to retain my German. Dutch is supposed to be the easiest language for an English speaker to learn. The pronunciation and handling of vowels is tough to get and there are some guttural sounds that my French R has prepared me for. I've heard Frisian many years ago online, but it would be interesting to go back and see if Dutch has helped.

[@erichamilton3373]

Italian, Norwegian, and French are considered the easiest for English speakers due to vocabulary, pronunciation ( not for French) and fairly simple Grammar. Dutch grammar and pronunciation make it harder for anglophones.

[@pierreabbat6157]

How come the nominative plural of "neat" and "naut" is the same as the singular, but of "Schaf" and "Tier" it isn't? (The German cognate is "Noß", but Wiktionary doesn't have "Noß", only a link to it.)

[@erichamilton3373]

According to some research, Italian, Norwegian, and French are the three easiest languages for anglophones to learn measured by hours of learning to get to a decent level. Italian due to fairly simple pronunciation for English speakers, not too hard grammar and lots of shared vocabulary.

[@thischannelhasnoname5780]

Scots was perhaps verging on a separate language a few centuries ago but frankly no-one now speaks it apart from a few err 'enthusiasts'. Scots speak a range of varieties of English some of which have a number of linguistic Scotticisms, many of which have very few (I am excluding the accent here). Speech varieties across the UK have levelled out a lot and Scottish English is no exception.

[@davidbarton1928]

Your excellently twangy theme tune... I keep expecting it to break into Blondie's 'Atomic' but it never quite does.

[@ItsMikeLearns]

as a perosn that loves languages. i would love to try to learn Frisian! thanks for the video

[@yankldoodl8096]

Apropos dual as a pronoun, this seems like as good a crowd as any for me to ask why Modern Icelandic, and to some extent other Scandinavian languages, settled on expanding the scope of the dual forms of the first and second person pronouns when they lost the dual as a second number rather than losing them altogether. Is there evidence that the duals might actually been more like paucals, in the period leading up to this change, the way German uses paar, or we use a couple? Why did we keep við and þið instead of vér and þér.

[@NovaSeven]

Hello Frisians, I’m an American of Frisian descent but I don’t know too much about the languages, and so I’d like to outsource a question to you all. My last name is DeVries, which I know means “The Frisian,” but why is it not DeFryske? I remember reading about this online a while ago, and I think it was possibly an older Dutch pronunciation with the initial consonant being voiced, but then evidently is now voiceless and so would be DeFriese now. It was my great-great-great grandfather Tjeerds (he apparently changed his name to Evart though) who came from Friesland to the U.S. in the late 19th century. If anyone has some insight, I’d appreciate it.

[@mormacil]

Because by the time last names became a common thing the majority of those of Frisian ancestry spoke Dutch. Especially those in northern Holland spoke a more Dutch dialect. Also in that time spelling was looser and both Vriesland and Friesland were valid spellings of the name.

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

because it's Dutch and they dropped the k, look what happened to 'fish' in Dutch. Proto-Germanic *fiskaz> old Dutch visc> new Dutch vis. Like the word Engels meaning English is miising 'ish/isk.'

[@lhpl]

You just reminded me of something. "Friis", or "Fries" is a common surname in Denmark, and also the name of several noble families.

[@lhpl]

"Vries" or "Frijs" is to "Frysk", like "Dane" is to "Danish" (although in Danish we say "en dansker" - "a Danisher" - about a person for some reason.) Or "Jyde" to "Jysk" (Jute/Jutish.) So its not a matter of losing a consonant - it's a suffix that is usually just not used in names.

[@James-sq7hr]

I would say that some of the traditional, rural/coastal dialects of Newfoundland English could also be considered a breakaway language (these strong dialects [w/ heavy Irish & West Country English influence] are pretty distinct, in morphology, phonology & vocabulary, & are largely unintelligible, w/out some study, to the average speaker of other forms of English), although, I'm not sure if these more distinct dialects of Newfoundland Eng are still used by very many.

[@clnkd3852]

Is the 3rd person dual pronoun in Old Frisian (and think you said Gothic) really an innovation, or is it just something retained from Indo-European, which had dual for all classes of nouns and pronouns?

[@James-o9e7y]

I would say that traditional, coastal Newfoundland English counts (linguistically, not politically) as a different language, too (to me, it seems more distinctly separate than Scots); w/out study, &/or significant immersion, it'll be largely incomprehensible to many native speakers of Eng., & it differs in terms of vocabulary, phonology & grammar.

[@hansbreslau8119]

It´s not forgotten. They speak it here in Saterland and the East-Frisian Platt is full of Frisian Substrat. Not even mentioning the West- and North Frisians. But when you know that the modern Frisians are in fact descendant of the Jutes, which fled from the Danes, it´s no wonder it isvery close to English as the Angles were the neighbors of the Jutes.

[@michaelchen8643]

I looked at the friggin language when I found a video by twares A male female dual when they were performing their late teens almost 10 years ago I wasn’t enthralled because I could hear words that are like and other Frisian Language step, but I could hear whole phrases like a couple of hens and cup of coffee just like modern English, so I imagine that it was a dialect of English I have since learned, looking at it, that there are whole words that come from different routes of Proto, Germanic that make it very much separate language What Friesian and modern English share our pho tactics the way phonemes are put together that makes them very compatible However, modern Scots is even closer to modern English It’s funny how a little bit of mutual intelligibility plays with one’s mind at least mine

[@RoderickEmanuel]

Friggian? Ou Kay! Frizzian!

[@faramund9865]

Forgotten, if you’re not Dutch like me with Frisian ancestry. In fact I’m going to bet most people in Holland have either medieval or recently traceable Frisian ancestors.

[@faramund9865]

In fact, many people in Holland have Frisian surnames or even literally the surname: ‘de Vries’ - ‘the Frisian’.

[@faramund9865]

Even further, certain placenames like Oegstgeest stem from Frisian personal names rather than Frankish. In this case Osgeresgaist. Osger being the Frisian form (and identical to English?) and Ansger the Frankish.

[@faramund9865]

Also, the coastal dialects in Holland and Zeeland are STILL quite distinct even from inland towns only a few km away. Example: Kattuks with bilabial W and Æ sound instead of AA.

[@faramund9865]

Kattuks also has sk- and not sch-

[@redwaldcuthberting7195]

@@faramund9865 Osgar 'spear of God' in old English.

[@Demosophist]

What's the difference between ancient Frisian (Friesian?) and the language in the Oera Linda Codex that they're calling "Fryan"?

[@easterlinear]

The tribes that went to Britain after the Romans left were the Angles, the Jutes and SAXONS. English derives from their languages, which evolved into low German (Saxony is still a German province). The Frisians never migrated to Britain and Frisian is entirely unintelligible to English speakers.

[@greenman77777]

The Frisian people were trading butter with York and London a long time ago.

[@Monkey-Boy2006]

As always a good and informative video! I love the old style black and white photo you sneaked in after the Grimfrost ad BTW.

[@paholainen100]

very interesting

[@fjallaxd7355]

Good video.

[@TheGrant65]

Re. "She" - replacing OE "heo" or "hio" in English - EtymologyOnline explains it thus: "heo ... by 13c. ... had converged by phonetic evolution with he "he," which apparently led to the fem. demonstrative pronoun being used in place of the pronoun (compare similar development in Dutch zij, German sie ... etc.). The original h- survives in her. A relic of the Old English pronoun is in Manchester-area dialectal _oo_ "she." I have seen "oo" and "oo's" used in writing. interesting that a northern English dialect should be more conservative, despite the greater influence of Norse. A parallel example is how some N. England dialects preserved the "thou" v "you" distinction until the early 20th c.

[@tzazosghost8256]

Dorset dialect uses "he" contracted to 'ee' for both sexes, which is not surprisingas a lot of old english "eo" words became "ee" words. Confusing in isolation since it's also 'ee (thee), 'ea (yea), and the neutral plural from old english 'hie'. But context makes things clear.

[@ashleypihlcrantz9836]

What about the Teutonic Knights? Who rode these Magestic black Freisian horses, they were Stealth in the night because of their black color, these horses were medium "draft" strong enough to carry men with heavy mail and armor but fast enough to charge a battalion and fast enough to get away, they are gentle black giants but smart,they are able to get in and out of anything(houdini horses)ive seen them in action, strong horses but swift and loyal, interesting your explanation of Friesian words compared to Old Norse

[@gerardvila4685]

This thing about "is it a language or not?" - it isn't black and white. For instance, a Geordie (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) accent is a lot closer to Scots than it is to Southern accents, and they too have different ways of saying things. The same applies to Yorkshire, where for instance they kept on calling their friends and relatives "thee" and "thou" a century or two after it had disappeared from standard English.

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy"

[@carolyncampbell8724]

My late mom (Flemish war bride) told me the frisian were considered country bumpkin by the Dutch and flemish. Of course the flemish were considered the same by the oh so sophisticated Dutch as well as the walloons.

[@ReidHenderson]

I know this is off subject and I love this subject but do you habe Brown eyes or Blue?I notices you squint alot like me in sunlight and I have blue eyes

[@dixgun]

Does ‘y’all’ (or ‘yawl’) exist in English outside of the United States?

[@ElaineAxten]

We understand it in the UK when you say it, but we wouldn't say it. HOWEVER! I read recently that y'all comes from the Dutch jullie (meaning you all)

[@whatever3385]

Bokmål has to be the easiest.

[@marjae2767]

Italo-Gothic + Old High German question: Totila is attested in the 6th century. Is it just me, or does this suggest that the High German sound shift reached some late Gothic dialects?

[@FrisianWithHilbert]

Frisian represent.

[@kawawangkowboy9566]

I always thought Jamaican Patois was younger than Scots. Is it not?

[@alexis.s.glesgagal]

Jamaican Patois is younger than Scots.

[@tidsdjupet-mr5ud]

Another similarity between North Germanic and Frisian is the loss of word-final n. Like in the infinitives of verbs and oblique forms of weak nouns.

[@hbowman108]

Also common in Afrikaans.

[@AdrianStefanik1]

You you you Bro! Come to the Netherlands and visit the Dutch province Fryslân, where people learn and speak Fries every day! And there are many kinds and dialects of Fries which is the second recognised language after Dutch. It is flat, people there are proud and stubborn like hell, but the area has certainly its own identity and this little resistance against official Dutch governmental decisions... check this out, Fries (Frisian in English actually) is almost like a Scandinavian language. When I am in Fryslân (Friesland) it feels like I am in secret non existing Scandinavian country. Cheers Bro!... oh, excuse me, I meant Dr. Crawford. Greetings from the former bottom of the North See , Dr. Crawford , from Lelystad.

[@marchauchler1622]

​@Bjowolf2 is north Frisian version easier to understand for you? Or can understand them equally well

[@tiemenanthonie568]

Bjuster dat der wer in bytsje omtinken is foar it Frysk. It is in prachtige spraak, en ik heapje dat it noch in hiel skoft sprutsen wurden sil.

[@SIG442]

Ik bin Frysk en ik moatsto dochs wat ferbettereje. Frysk is in offisjele taal, gjin dialekt. Of it moat wêze dat wy it hawwe oer guon ferzjes fan Frysk dy net erkend wêze as talen. In dialekt fan Frysk moatsto tinke oan modern Drents, ek al wolle de Drentenaren dit net erkenen, do kinst yn it Frysk prate tsjin har en hja sille do nijsgjirrich goed kinne begripe. In soad wurden yn it Drents syn tige vergelijkbaar mei it Frysk. Asto Frysk kinne lêzen en skriuwen, dan kinsto ek talen as Noors, Deensk en Sweedsk lêzen oant in aardige mannichte.

[@paholainen100]

sehr interessant

[@martinschenk4286]

Wessex means western saxon. London meens ( Land op ) Land on in south oldFrisian now Zeeland . But it sounds like london Greetings from the Netherlands

[@tanaquilz2842]

How do you mean, forgotten??

[@vvvvaaaacccc]

I imgaine he didn't mean badly by it. but, arguably, Frisian and its cousin status are forgotten, or perhaps more accurately totally unknown, to most English speakers. English speakers are the implicit audience of these videos.

[@greenman77777]

Butter is butter in West Frisian language

[@SinilkMudilaSama]

Yu vidio rili fayn, bɔt tide a si se Ɔknɛyk, Shetlandik ɛn Skɔtish Dɔrik tide tan lɛk di Frisian we bin de trade, we bin de insay di midul ivul ɛn we bin de naw. Inglish tek Frɛnch grama ɛn in langwej ɛn lɔjik na di Frɛnch dɛn mek am bak, ɛn i bin dɔn ɔlrɛdi de insay wan prɔses fɔ lingwistik miscegenation ɛn creolezation frɔm di tɛm we di Roman dɛn bin win. Fɔ ad mɔ pan di tru tin se Inglish we de naw tek bɔku verb ɛn wɔd dɛn frɔm Eshian, Amɛrindian, Ɔstroneshian ɛn Afrikan langwej dɛn, infakt i tek di Romans karakta ɛn Krio Romanicity we i gɛt tide. A lɛk yu wok, i siriɔs dediket, ful wit pawa 🥰 ɛn bɔku sɛns 🦉 ɔg, brɔda linguist, a rili lɛk yu. ❤❤❤❤

[@melissahdawn]

I love this!!!!!

[@ElaineAxten]

Scots < Lowland Scots < Lallands

[@KELTIKGETORIX]

Hahaha, a Cowboy explaining the Anglisch to English. While speaking Yank/English, Well done my Yankee couz!

[@groezy]

phrygian?

[@beepboop204]

[@HenleyPolitics]

Afrikaans,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[@HakanAzdubey-ho5hz]

Why nobody cares about Low Saxon. It is also mostly related to English. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 Please do a Video of Low Saxon.

[@Weda01]

Could be fun, but which one(s) of the Low Saxon dialects should it be? I mean if you have Northern Low Saxon (like with Gronings for example) where they still use a lot of Frisian words than it is to be expected.

[@HakanAzdubey-ho5hz]

@@Weda01 Generally. Pomeranian, Lipsk Platt, East Westphalian are interesting dialekts. For example we in Paderborn have preseved the proto-germanic "au" in Braud (Bread), daud (dead), blaud (blood) and so on. Also the sk had been preseved here: skaup (sheep), skip (ship) skön (nice), dütsk, frysk, nederlandsk,...). And like Icelandic we use many words where so called "hiats" had been velarized : Eg (egg) buggen (to build), trügge ( true). There is also another interesting Feature in our east westphalian dialect: The Westphalian breaking: liäsen ( to read), niäsen (nose), iut (Out), hiuse (House), niägen ( nine). We use also very old words like hügen (to think), harrer (loud). Wy küeret use tungsliäge so faken ässe det ment geyt. Wy hevet völ pleseyr Derby!!! We speak our dialects as often as it is possible. It is a great pleasure for us.

[@HakanAzdubey-ho5hz]

@@Weda01 Wöi wüllt ja tau jök reoverkumen, aver wöi hevvet neine Töid", säe möine Friu, "diu weist doch eok, dat möin H. nich mäier sau giud tau Faute is. Vor twei Wecken herre hei wier Weidoge, un ek säe tau üene, hei schall nich sauviel arbeien. Hei wolle nich up mek hüeren. Wöi saiht üsch dann morgen. Gistern wüeren Luie in'n Derpe, däi wollen Swöine koipen." This is Low Saxon from Hildesheim.

[@Weda01]

@@HakanAzdubey-ho5hz Thanks for the response, it's also interesting to read that in Paderborn the "sk" sound remains just like in West-Frisian. The words Skip, Dütsk, Frysk and Nederlansk are written the same way in West-Frisian (although we write Dütsk with a normal "u" and with the word Nederlansk we replace the normal "a" with "â").

[@ingermimi]

Why do you wear a cowbey hat? Sendes very confusing signals

[@lhpl]

Because he is outdoors, in Colorado? I'm Danish, but I also wear a (black Stetson cavalry) hat when outside. 😂

[@b43xoit]

You're mumbling a bit here.

[@wizardgaming669]

I speak Danish, English and French. I have listened to Frisian and it’s very similiar to my Danish dialect and to English.