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2.2.The relationship between Frisian and the other Germanic languages.

This short outline of the relationships among the Germanic languages shows that English is the language which is genetically closest to Frisian, and still today English is considered to be most similar to Frisian. For example The Columbia Encyclopedia (2001) says: “Of all foreign languages, [Frisian] is most like English”. Pei (1966, p. 34) summarizes the situation as follows: “Frisian, a variant of Dutch spoken along the Dutch and German North Sea coast, is the foreign speech that comes closest to modern English, as shown by the rhyme: ‘Good butter and good cheese is good English and good Fries’”. This rhyme refers to the fact that the words for butter and cheese are almost the same in the two languages. However, in the course of history, contact with other Germanic languages has caused Frisian to converge to these languages. The Frisians have a long history of trade and in early medieval times they were one of the leading trading nations in Europe due to their strategic geographic position close to major trade routes along the rivers and the North Sea. Also, the Vikings and the English were frequent visitors of the Frisian language area. This intensive contact with both English and the North Germanic languages, especially Danish, resulted in linguistic exchanges (see Feitsma, 1963; Miedema, 1966; Wadstein, 1933). Later in history, the Frisian language was especially influenced by the Dutch language (which itself contains many Frisian elements). For a long period, Frisian was stigmatized as a peasant language and due to the weak social position of the Frisian language in the Dutch community it was often suppressed, resulting in a strong Dutch impact on the Frisian language. Nowadays, Dutch as the language of the administration still has a large influence on the media and there has been substantial immigration of Dutch speaking people to Friesland. However, the provincial government has decided to promote Frisian at all levels in the society.

When investigating the position of the Frisian language within the Germanic language group, there are clearly two forces which should be taken into account. On the one hand, Frisian and English are genetically closely related and share sound changes which do not occur in the other Germanic languages. This yields the expectation that the linguistic distance between these two languages is relatively small. On the other hand, the close contact with Dutch makes it plausible that the Dutch and the Frisian languages have converged. Also the distance to Danish might be smaller than expected from the traditional division of Germanic into a North Germanic and a West Germanic branch at an early stage because of the intensive contacts in the past.