Title of the article

5.1.The classification of the Germanic languages

Looking at the clusters of language varieties in Figure 5 we note that our results reflect the traditional classification of the Germanic languages to a large extent (see Figure 1). On the highest level there is a division between English and the other Germanic languages. When we examine the group of other Germanic languages, we find a clear division between the North Germanic languages and the West Germanic languages. Within the North Germanic group, we see a clear division between the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) on the one hand and the Faroese and Icelandic on the other hand. In the genetic tree (see Figure 1), Norwegian is clustered with Icelandic and Faroese. However, due to the isolated position of Iceland and the Faroes and intensive language contact between Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, modern Norwegian has become very similar to the modern languages of Denmark and Sweden. All varieties spoken in the Netherlands, including the Frisian varieties, cluster together, and German clusters more closely to these varieties than English.
F
igure 5. Dendrogram showing the clustering of the 14 language varieties in our study. The scale distance shows average Levenshtein distances in percentages.
All Frisian dialects form a cluster. This clustering corresponds well with the traditional classification as sketched in Section 3.1. The dialects of Hijum and Oosterbierum belong to Klaaifrysk and these dialects form a cluster. The Wâldfrysk dialects of Westergeest and Wetsens also cluster together. The Levenshtein distance between the four dialects is small, ranging from 19.6% between Hijum and Oosterbierum and 23.8% between Oosterbierum and Westergeest. Also the Súdwesthoeksk dialects, represented by the Tjerkgaast dialect, are rather close to the Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk dialects (distances between 21.6% and 26.4%). The highly conservative dialect of Hindeloopen is more deviant from the other dialects (distances between 29.8% and 32.5%) and this is also the case for the Town Frisian dialect of Leeuwarden which is more similar to Dutch (20.3%) than to Frisian (between 32.3% and 35.8%) which confirms the characterization of Town Frisian by Kloeke (1927) as ‘Dutch in Frisian mouth’.