West Germanic languages | Definition, Map, Countries, Tree, Origin, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)

West Germanic languages, group of Germanic languages that developed in the region of the North Sea, Rhine-Weser, and Elbe. Out of the many local West Germanic dialects the following six modern standard languages have arisen: English, Frisian, Dutch (Netherlandic-Flemish), Afrikaans, German, and Yiddish.

English

English and Frisian are descended from North Sea Germanic. The most striking changes that distinguish them from the other Germanic languages are the loss of nasal sounds before the Proto-Germanic voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, and *s (contrast the following pairs of words, in which English loses the nasal but German preserves it: before f_—_soft/sanft; before þ_—_other/ander; before s_—_us/uns, goose/Gans); palatalization of Proto-Germanic *k before front vowels and *j, giving modern English ch (English/German pairs: chin/Kinn, birch [Old English _birce_]/Birke); and palatalization of Proto-Germanic *ǥ before front vowels, giving modern English y (English/German pairs include yield/_gelten, yester-_[_day_]/gestern, yard [Old English _geard_]/Garten; this palatalized ǥ merged with the j [y sound] from Proto-Germanic *j: year/Jahr).

(Read H.L. Mencken’s 1926 Britannica essay on American English.)

Other changes include palatalization of gg before j to Old English cg (Proto-Germanic *brugjō, pre-Old English *bruggju, Old English brycg ‘bridge’; contrast the unpalatalized ck from gg of German Brücke ‘bridge’); a front reflex of Proto-Germanic *_ē_1 (English/German pairs include deed/Tat, seed/Saat, sleep/schlafen, meal/Mahl); and backing and raising of nasalized ā, from Proto-Germanic *ā and *a before nasal plus f, þ, and s (English/German pairs include brought/brachte, thought/dachte, other/ander, and goose/Gans).

For further information on English, see English language.

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Frisian

A thousand years or so ago Frisian was apparently spoken throughout a North Sea coastal area extending from the modern Netherlands province of Noord-Holland (North Holland) on up to modern German Schleswig and the adjacent offshore islands. During the following centuries the Frisian of much of this area was gradually replaced by local Dutch and Low German dialects, so that Modern Frisian is now spoken in only three remaining areas: (1) West Frisian, in the Dutch province of Friesland, including the island of Schiermonnikoog and two-thirds of the island of Terschelling (altogether some 400,000 speakers), (2) East Frisian, in the German Saterland (some 1,000 speakers; this area was apparently settled in the 12th or 13th century from the former East Frisian area to the north), and (3) North Frisian, along the west coast of German Schleswig and on the offshore islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, the Halligen, and Helgoland (altogether some 8,000 speakers).

History

The earliest manuscripts written in Frisian date from the end of the 13th century, though the legal documents that they contain were probably first composed, in part, as early as the 11th century. This stage of the language, until about 1575, is known as Old Frisian. The last written document of this period dates from 1573, after which Frisian was relatively little used as a written language for some three centuries.

From the start Old Frisian shows all the features that distinguish English and Frisian from the other Germanic languages. These include loss of the nasal sound before Proto-Germanic *f, *þ, and *s (e.g., Proto-Germanic *fimf, *munþ-, and *uns became Old Frisian fīf ‘five,’ mūth ‘mouth,’ and ūs ‘us’), palatalization of Proto-Germanic *k before front vowels and *j (e.g., Proto-Germanic *kinn- and *lē_1_kj- became Old Frisian tzin ‘chin’ and lētza ‘physician’ [compare English archaic _leech_]), and palatalization of Proto-Germanic *ǥ before front vowels (e.g., Proto-Germanic *ǥeldan- became Old Frisian ielda ‘yield’). This merged with the j from Proto-Germanic *j, as in Proto-Germanic *jē_1_r- or Old Frisian iēr ‘year.’ In addition, Old Frisian shows palatalization of gg from Proto-Germanic *g before j (e.g., Proto-Germanic *la ǥjan-, with doubling *laggjan, became Old Frisian ledza ‘to lay’); a front vowel for Proto-Germanic *_ē_1, as in Proto-Germanic *dē[eth], Old Frisian dēd; and backing and raising of nasalized ã from Proto-Germanic *ã and Proto-Germanic *a before nasal plus *f, *þ, *s, as in Proto-Germanic *brãxt-, *anþar-, and *gans-, which became Old Frisian brocht ‘brought,’ ōther ‘other,’ and gōs ‘goose.’

About the beginning of the 19th century it appeared that the age-old replacement of Frisian by Dutch and Low German would continue unabated and that the language would soon become extinct. But with 19th-century Romanticism a new interest in local life arose, and societies were formed for the preservation of the Frisian language and culture. Very slowly, the aims of this “Frisian movement” came to be realized, especially in the Netherlands province of Friesland, where in 1937 Frisian was accepted as an optional course in elementary schools; a Frisian Academy was founded in 1938; and in 1943 the first Frisian translation of the Bible was published. In 1955 Frisian was approved as the language of instruction in the first two years of elementary school (though only about one-fourth of all schools use it in this way), and in 1956 the use of Frisian in courts of law was approved.

Despite this gradual reemergence of Frisian, Dutch still functions as the primary standard language of Friesland. Nearly all school instruction is given in Dutch; all daily newspapers are printed in Dutch (though they contain occasional articles in Frisian); and the majority of television and radio broadcasts are in Dutch. There is a small and enthusiastic Frisian literary movement, but its works are not widely read. Furthermore, though Frisian continues to be widely used as the language of everyday oral communication, it is increasingly a “Dutch” Frisian, with numerous borrowings from standard Dutch.

The status of Frisian in the East and North Frisian areas of Germany is far more tenuous. There German performs all the functions of a standard language, and Frisian serves only as yet another local dialect, comparable to the many surrounding local dialects of Low German. No standard North Frisian or East Frisian exists.

Characteristics

The following remarks refer to the more or less standard West Frisian that is developing in the province of Friesland.

Frisian has the following system of consonants, given here in the usual spellings: stops, p, b, t, d, k, g; fricatives, f, v, s, z, ch, g; nasals, m, n, ng; liquids, l, r; and glides, w, h, j. Examples (given here in part to show the close relationship between Frisian and English) include p, t, and k (unaspirated) in peal ‘pole,’ twa ‘two,’ and kat ‘cat’; b, d, and the stop symbolized by the letter g in boi ‘boy,’ dei ‘day,’ and goed ‘good’; f, s, and ch in fiif ‘five,’ seis ‘six,’ and acht ‘eight’; v, z, and the fricative symbolized by the letter g in tolve ‘twelve,’ tûzen ‘thousand,’ and wegen ‘ways’; m, n, and ng in miel ‘meal,’ need ‘need,’ and ring ‘ring’; l and r in laem ‘lamb’ and reep ‘rope’; w, h, and j in wy ‘we,’ hy ‘he,’ and jo ‘you.’ As the final letter of a word, voiced b, d, z, and g are generally unvoiced to p, t, s, and ch.

Frisian has the system of stressed vowels and diphthongs shown in the Click Here to see full-size tabletable. The symbols given in the table refer to the actual sounds rather than to Frisian spellings, which are often irregular. Frisian also has an unstressed vowel ə (pronounced as the a in English sofa), which occurs only in unstressed syllables.

Dialects

The Frisian dialects of the Netherlands province of Friesland are, with three exceptions, relatively uniform, though it is customary to make a distinction between Wouden Frisian in the east, Klei Frisian in the west (the variety on which standard Frisian is largely based), and Southwest Corner Frisian in the southwest. The three exceptions are the island dialect of East and West Terschelling and the dialects of the city of Hindeloopen and of the island of Schiermonnikoog. These latter two differ so greatly that they are not intelligible to other speakers of West Frisian and are both dying out. Quite different from any of these is the so-called City Frisian (Stedfrysk, or Stedsk) spoken in the cities of Leeuwarden, Franeker, Harlingen, Bolsward, Sneek, Staveren, and Dokkum. Despite the name, this is not Frisian at all but a variety of Dutch strongly influenced by Frisian. Similar in nature are the dialects of Heerenveen and Kollum, of the middle section of the island of Terschelling, and of Het Bildt (a coastal area northwest of Leeuwarden, diked in and settled by Hollanders during the 16th century).

East Frisian survives today only in the German Saterland, consisting of the three parishes of Ramsloh, Strücklingen, and Scharrel, each with a slightly different dialect. The area to the north is called East Frisia (German Ostfriesland), and the local dialect East Frisian (German Ostfriesisch), although it is actually not Frisian but the local variety of Low German.

Though North Frisian is spoken in only a small geographic area by only some 8,000 persons, it exists in an extraordinary number of local dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible. Because of this, it would be almost impossible to develop a single standard North Frisian that could be used throughout this area. North Frisian dialects are customarily divided into Insular North Frisian (Sylt, Föhr-Amrum, Helgoland) and Continental North Frisian (the Halligen Islands and the coast of Schleswig), the latter in seven main varieties and further subvarieties. Because this linguistic area long bordered on Danish, it was extensively influenced by the neighbouring Danish dialects. In more recent times it has been heavily influenced by German, both standard German and the neighbouring Low German dialects. Today all speakers of North Frisian are bilingual or trilingual; all learn Frisian at home and standard German in school, and many also learn dialectal Low German.