CHAT: Frisian

Hello,

Just is anyone qualified enough to resolve the following difficulty?

I have just bought a brochure, which claims to be a book, and is
actually a 3000-thousand Russian-Frisian (Fering) lexicon, together with
the essentials of the grammar. What it mentions and what puzzles me is
the lack of a common Frisian language. 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. While I have
always been led to think that there is a common basically intelligible
Frisian language, Netherlands Frisian being the accepted standard.

I know the language vs dialect problem is a moot point, but can anyone
say whether positing a number of Frisian languages is justified
(socio)linguistically?

Thanks,
Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb

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