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Getting Frysky | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 17 09 March 2010 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been reading a lot about the history of Britain recently, and whilst looking up Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) during my break today (yes, for fun - I know, it's sad), I came across this well-packaged campaign to revitalise Frisian languages called Praat mar Frysk (here's the alternative "plain Jane" Wikipedia entry in Dutch, and the glossy offical website too for anyone who's interested).
Now..I know little or nothing about Frisian languages, and my Dutch is sadly so far limited to a deep admiration of Van Gogh and just one chirpy waking phrase, "Goedemorgen". However I do remember reading that West Frisian and English (particularly the Northumbrian dialect) are quite closely related on the Antimoon website some years back. In fact, after a little rummaging around, here's the post entitled What is the closest language to English?, and here's an excerpt from it: "The closest language to English is Frisian. However the closest language to Frisian is Dutch and the closest language to Dutch is German so... <sigh> it's quite complicated." [source: Sander] With a little investigating, and drawing upon my current handy German studies, I can also certainly see how many words have migrated and clearly developed from Old German, via Dutch and Frisian, into modern English over the centuries: "Frisian: zurück (German) -> terug (Dutch) -> tebek (Frisian) -> back (English)" [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages] So with all this in mind, and keen to find out whether this affinity between English and Frisian holds true, I had a listen to some Frisian on the Internet too. Here's one hilarious example of Eddie Izzard trying to buy a cow in Friesland by trying to communicate with a farmer in Old English, and here's a much longer documentary of Victoria Secret model Doutzen Kroes chatting in Frisian. Well, I could certainly pick up several English words here and there myself, but the rest all sounded like a warming Germanic goulash of what I imagine to be Dutch, Danish and German. I did find the intonation however very English-sounding, much than any other languages I've come across so far in my travels. I found this comment on the latter video particularly interesting: "I grew up in Friesland. As a child I never understood why on the Dutch television Frisian speaking people where subtitled. Too me it just sounded like Dutch. Now (having been away from Friesland for many years) I have to concentrate to understand it. When I first moved out of Friesland often people could not understand what I was saying. Still nowadays they often think I have an American accent speaking Dutch. The benefit is that speaking English I hardly have an accent." [source: edgarbiervliet] So I was thinking...with so many forum members fluent in Dutch, German or Scandanavian languages (and I dare imagine even Old English too), I guess there are plenty of you here who can make much more sense out of this than my humble ears. So how well can you understand West Frisian? Is there a lot of crossover with your own native language? Is it really just like Dutch, as some people would have us believe? Do we even have some Frisian speakers on the forum? It'd be interesting to see how close this otherwise largely unknown language really is to other people's languages... :) Edited by Teango on 09 March 2010 at 5:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5422 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 17 10 March 2010 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||
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| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5469 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 3 of 17 10 March 2010 at 8:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I find West Frisian much more comprehensible than some other Flemish dialects such as West Flemish. (Thanks to my Dutch, I don't think my English helped me with it)
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 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 17 10 March 2010 at 8:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I watched a part of a Frisian TV program on Dutch TV with Dutch subtitles, but I had to refer to the subtitles, because I don't understand spoken Frisian so well. I am fluent in Dutch anyway, but I am not familiar with Frisian.
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 10 March 2010 at 8:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 17 10 March 2010 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is it true that a Frisian person can speak English accent free and vice versa? Or is this a
myth. I seem to remember something about that on the internet somewhere that the languages are so similar in accent... Btw Frisian is a really cool language. I think we should start a trend of learning it. It's not really hard, although I'd imagine that it would be difficult to get resources. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 17 10 March 2010 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Judging by their accents speaking Dutch, Frisian, and Esperanto, I'd say no, though I don't think I've heard a Frisian speaker speak English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 17 10 March 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even so I think we should start a small group of West Frisian language learners. I can check Amazon.de for books(I already checked the English speaking sites a few weeks ago, there's nothing :P ). Who would be interested in learning even a bit?
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| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 17 10 March 2010 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to learn Frisian, you should speak Dutch and/or German, because the resources will be in these languages. There is also a Frisian minority in Germany, but I have no clue whether there are any good language resources in German because in Germany the Frisian language has no official status and is dying out.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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