Re: CHAT: Frisian

Pavel Iosad scripsit:

> What it says is that Old Frisian
> broke up into West Frisian (that being the Netherlands version), some 15
> North Frisian language_s_ (yes, plural), and by the way it says all the
> variants are standardized (I mean there is a standard for each
> language), and a number of East Frisian languages as well.
The Ethnologue, which is a splitter rather than a lumper, identifies
three languages (North, East, West) but does note that the North dialects
are sufficiently different that multiple written standards would be
required (I do not think they currently exist).  North and East Frisian
are more like German than like West Frisian, at least on the level of
simple lexicon (presumably West Frisian is more like Dutch, though the
Ethnologue doesn't say so).

> always been led to think that there is a common basically intelligible
> Frisian language, Netherlands Frisian being the accepted standard.
Seemingly not.  East Frisian is probably going extinct: the number of
home speakers has dropped to about 1000.  Literacy in any Frisian
language is rare, despite officially bilingual education in (Dutch) Friesland.
North Frisian has about 10,000 speakers and seems secure at least as a
home language.  West Frisian has about 730,000 speakers and is secure,
though of course all of these are under heavy pressure from Standard
German and Dutch on the literary, technical, and administrative fronts.

--
John Cowan                              jcowan@reutershealth.com
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              http://www.reutershealth.com
Thor Heyerdahl recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory
that the mongoose first came to India on a raft from Polynesia.
        --blurb for _Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi_