Title of the article

3.Data sources

In this section, we will first give a short characterization of the language varieties and the speakers who were recorded for our investigation. Next, we will present the nature of the recordings and the transcriptions which formed the basis for linguistic distance measurements.

3.1.Language varieties

Since our main interest was the Frisian language and its linguistic position within the Germanic language group we wished to represent this language as well as possible. For this reason, we included seven Frisian varieties, spread over the Frisian language area. Furthermore, our material contained eight Germanic standard languages. First, we will describe the Frisian varieties and next the standard languages.

As far as the Frisian varieties are concerned, we chose varieties from different parts of the province, both from the coastal area and from the inland. The varieties are spoken in different dialect areas according to the traditional classification (see below) and they represent different stages of conservatism. The precise choice of the seven varieties was determined by speaker availability for recordings in our vicinity and at the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden. In Figure 2, the geographical position of the seven Frisian language varieties in the province of Friesland is shown.

Due to the absence of major geographical barriers, the Frisian language area is relatively uniform. The major dialectal distinctions are primarily phonological. Traditionally, three main dialect areas are distinguished (see e.g. Hof, 1933; Visser, 1997): Klaaifrysk (clay Frisian) in the west, Wâldfrysk (forest Frisian) in the east and Súdwesthoeksk (southwest quarter) in the southwest. In our material Klaaifrysk is represented by the dialects of Oosterbierum and Hijum, Wâldfrysk by Wetsens and Westergeest, and Súdwesthoeksk by Tjerkgaast. Hindeloopen is in the area of Súdwesthoeksk. However, this dialect represents a highly conservative area. The phonological distance between Hindeloopen and the main dialects is substantial (van der Veen, 2001). Finally, our material contains the variety spoken in Leeuwarden (see note 1). This is an example of Town Frisian, which is also spoken in other cities of Friesland. Town Frisian is a Dutch dialect strongly influenced by Frisian but stripped of the most characteristic Frisian elements (Goossens, 1977).


Figure 2. The geographical position of the seven Frisian language varieties in the province of Friesland.
In addition to the Frisian dialects, the following eight standard languages were included: Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, English, Dutch, and German. We had meant to include all standard Germanic languages in our material. However, due to practical limitations a few smaller languages were not included.

As for Norwegian, there is no official standard variety. The varieties spoken around the capital of Oslo in the southeast, however, are often considered to represent the standard language. We based the present investigation on prior research on Norwegian dialects (see Heeringa and Gooskens, 2003; Gooskens and Heeringa, submitted), and we chose the recording which to Norwegians sounded most standard, namely the Lillehammer recording_¹². It was our aim to select standard speakers from all countries, but it is possible that the speech of some speakers contains slight regional influences. The speakers from Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Sweden spoke the standard varieties of the capitals. The Danish speaker came from Jutland, the German speaker from Kiel, the English speaker from Birmingham and the Dutch speaker had lived at different places in the Netherlands, including a long period in the West during adolescence.