Frisian linguist here! I love that you did this video, thank you so much for acknowledging the Frisian language! I wanted to give some additional info on the history: so Old English and Old Frisian are nearly identical and that's because the Frisians traveled along with the Angles and Saxons to England and the mix was the origin of the language. Old English and Old Frisian went through a lot of the same processes of language change (you can look up word pairs that are nearly identical in Frisian and English and not with Dutch and German), but then English was influenced a lot by Norman French and Old Norse, whereas Old Frisian remained in contact with Saxon (Low German) and Low Franconian (Dutch). However, Old English is so different from Modern English, that you wouldn't be able to understand it at all, actually, in my Old English class the Frisians had a leg up, then the Dutch kids, and then the native English speakers! That's why it's technically the closest relative to English alive, but resembles Dutch and German much more and English speakers struggle with understanding it without knowledge of a continental Germanic language like Dutch and German. HOWEVER! You absolutely did a great job using the mutual intelligibility of both your languages here and I love these kinds of experiments
It's only now that I've realised that Friesan is ridiculously close to my dialect. I'm from Cumbria North West England and we still have a lot of Old English in our dialect and listening to how Friesan is spoken it is so close to how we speak that it blew my mind when I heard it!
@@Electric_Campfire I love that! I haven't ever heard Cumbrian dialects, but I've heard some other Northumbrian and South Scottish speakers who sounded like family when I'm not paying attention! Southern English dialects have diverged a lot more in pronunciation than the areas in the north that also retained a lot of the Danelaw vocab and sounds. I'd love to hear more Cumbrian, I'll see if I can find some resources :D!
This coment is just amazingly clarifying to some questions I still had about Old English Old Low Frankonian and, I didn't know, also about Old Frisian. Thanks a lot!
I had read some years ago that many young people in Germany weren't learning and using the Frisian their families used and rejected Frisian and didn't bother with it at all. I don't know if it has also dropped from popularity in the Netherlands though.
Old English and old frisian were dialects of the same language, english after 1066 was strongly influenced by French, Frisian by Dutch and low-german.. so they grew appart :)
English was heavily influenced by Norse settlers. We not only borrowed many Norse words, but took up a lot of Norse syntax. English is more like Norwegian in syntax than like Dutch.
I think the language spectrum is; English - Northern English - Scottish Standard English - Scots - Frisian - Dutch - Plaatdeutche - German. When I was learning Scots about 8 years ago I quickly found that some sentences in Scots were understandable in Dutch or German but definitely not in English. It seems though that some areas of Scots are closer to English and some to Dutch/Frisian/Danish. Scots is an only partially standardised language, so you get words spelled, huis, muis, buik, shuin/shoen. Some follow English spelling on the page, like "ten" but it is pronounced as two syllables "ti" + "en" so should be written "tien" like in Dutch. To me it seems like many words to have a little gap in the middle like there is a "g" missing, so maybe was originally "tigen". That would fit with Indo-European "dekem". My spelling of Scots numbers would be, ane, twae, thrie, fier, fyfe, sax, zievin, eicht, niyen, tiyen, elf, twaal, thrietien - hunner, thoozend, muil'li'oen. So you can see more similarity with Dutch there immediately. The sound "uil" is Gaelic and has to be learned. Though it seems to occupy the same position as an "oel" sound in Dutch. You get it in the Scots words "muilk" = milk and "muillin" = mill. The sound spelled "ui" in other words sounds a bit like a stressed "i" or "ee" sound. The word fro school, "schuil" can sound like "skill" or in some areas like "squeal". Scots tend to say "sch" as SK not "sh" as English speakers do. Of course Scots also has a lot of Gaelic pronunciation, vocabulary and forms as well that are unrelated to any of these.
Lowland Scottish, was heavily influenced by the language of the Danelaw with its Scandinavian forms. We can still see this in the language, eg: shirt (OE), skirt (Danelaw) is Dutch schort. Also, a more archaic form of Frisian can be heard in the pronunciation on the Frisian islands, like Terschelling or Ameland.
Great video. I’m Dutch but lived in England and USA when I was young. I have a friend who lived in Friesland and I heard them speak Friesain with hardly any Dutch and somehow I understood what was said. Not exactly word for word but I knew wat they were saying. Friesain has the same sintax just like English. Nouns and verbs at the same place.
born a "deep-fries" i grew up bilingual; i moved to the west long time ago and noticed the erosion of my frysk. I keep it sort of, up to date by tuning in to Omrop Fryslan ....it usually polishes up my diminishing fryske vocabulary and always brings the smile of recognition to my face.
It's more related to English, not in the way that you can understand either with only knowing one, but there are more links etymologically, but that doesn't always result in being able to understand it haha. Also I can't recommend Zuid Limburg enough, it's in The Netherlands, but it feels like being on vacation, I moved here 1,5 years ago and didn't regret it!
Not the entirely head of North-Holland, but the part inside the 'Westfriese Omringdijk', a 126 km long dike from Alkmaar-Schagen-Medemblik-Enkhuizen-Hoorn-Alkmaar. Long ago Friesland and North-Holland fitted together. There was no Zuiderzee (nowadays IJsselmeer). In the 10th century the water came closer and closer and apperently the Zuiderzee was there.
@@donarnoldus7884 Not only that, Frysia as a region/culture predates Holland, let alone North Holland. This was the western part of Frysia in the Middle Ages. Of course Frysia was also the western part of the Frysian larger culture group so it gets confusing. So Alkmaar-Schagen-Medemblik-Enkhuizen-Hoorn-Alkmaar are the western part of Western Frysia.
@@donarnoldus7884 The geographical location of Westfriesland is within the Omringdijk. However the dialect is spoken in the entire North of North-Holland, this includes the distinct Eiland-Westfries which is spoken on Texel, Wieringen, Enkhuizen and even Vlieland.
@@bvanbiezen3008 Den Helder is or might be Hollandic, it grew because of the navy-base. "It's complicated :)". Texel is as "Westfries" as it gets :). Yet its not in what people call "Westfriesland" today. Language situation in the part of The Netherlands which right now is officially named "Noord-Holland" is fun, really. Volendams has a lot in common with actual Frisian, yet these people do not consider themselves to be anything but "Volendams" and Dutch.
@@bvanbiezen3008 I didn't know this, then it's similar to all places north of the old IJ bay shore, it say all started Frisian. Even Amsterdam once was Frisian, it was on a terp just north of the shores of IJ bay a long time ago, something in that corner. Castriucum might be even older then the Frisians, it might have been be Celtic in it's oldest days, yet overal all ground north of IJbay is Frisian and stolen from them in the late 12th century. Which in Frisian history is relative recent.
I happen to speak fluent Frisian, I even took Frisian as a final exam (vwo). There are a lot of similarities between English and Frisian (kaai/key, widdo/widow, swiet/sweet, dream/dream, etc) but if you only know English, you’ll be lost when hearing Frisian 🙈 What would be a better experiment, would be to listen to ‘Wêr bisto’ by the group Twarres’. It is very clearly sung word for word, and you’ll easily pick out a couple of similarities with English.
@stephandevos4246 You are 100% right. I only speak modern English and I did not recognise a single word or have any idea even to what she was speaking about. I don't speak French or German either but I find it easier to guess at least the subject being spoken about in those languages.
That's because she doesn't speak real Frisian. What Sjoukje is actually speaking, is "stads-Fries", a dialect mostly used in Leeuwarden, also called Ljouwerts or Liwwadders. Most of stads-Fries is not hard to follow, especially if you understand English and/or German as well.
As a proud Frisian, I like to hear more about the connection between English and Frisian. I always thought you could see the connection in the words, especcially when you put German next to it. Example: Englisch + Frisian vs Dutch + German > key + kaai vs sleutel + Schlüssel or horse + hynder vs paard + pferd.
Another amazing thing is that Frisian also has "hoars" which is kind of old-fashioned/archaic and only exists in compound words nowadays like "nylhoars" for hippo (literally "Nile horse").
Ik doe het in het Nederlands, want dat kan je prima, weet ik. Ik koe it ek yn it Frysk dwaan, mar dan begrypst my net, tink ik. Het Fries ligt tussen het Nederlands en het Engels in. Het vermoeden bestaat dat (heeeel lang geleden) Friezen de oversteek naar Engeland hebben gemaakt en dat hun taal het fundament voor het Angels (Engels) is. Latere inmenging van Frans en Noors/Deens hebben en ook eeuwen van gebruik hebben de taal ver van het (zich apart verder ontwikkelende) Fries verwijderd. Overigens spreekt Froukje Stadsfries. Dat is voor een Nederlander nog goed te volgen. Als je aan het fries wil wennen, kan je ervoor kiezen op de radio naar Omrop Fryslân te luisteren. Zo pik je het gaandeweg op. Leuk dat jullie terug zijn! Veel succes!
Yes, Frisian does sound similar to Old English. I took a course in college called linguistics and it dealt with the origins of the English language. It began with Anglo-Saxon, and then combined with Old Norse to form Old English. Then Middle English, and then Elizabethan English which was the time of William Shakespeare. Those of us who are English speakers can still understand Elizabethan English although. I'm 75% of Scots-Irish descent, but my maternal grandfather was of Flemish-Dutch descent. I can remember him speaking in Flemish and Dutch, and he also could speak some German and French. English is a very popular second language in Holland and Flanders. But they speak the American dialect of English rather than the British dialect of English. I have distant cousins who live in Flanders, and they say English is very easy for them to learn.
Great vid! Speaking of the similarities between Frisian and English or Frisian and Dutch. I actually had a Dutch person in Maastricht ask me something in English as he thought he overheard me and my family talking to each other in English while we were actually just speaking Frisian😂 You should’ve seen his face when we replied in perfect Dutch😄
@femke576 As someone who only speaks English I had no idea at all about what was being said. I cannot understand how a Dutch person overhearing Frsian could possibly mistake it for English. You must HAVE to know Dutch to see that because for me I would have been no worse off if it was Chinese 🙄
Welcome back. Frisian/Fries (and this lady, Sjoukje, was speaking Fries, not West-Fries which is spoken in the top of Noord-Holland) can be tricky, I grew up hearing my Mum speaking Frisian with her Mum and siblings, and unless I'm actively trying to figure out what they're saying I only understand half of it all :) When looking for a new home, avoid the larger cities themselves (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag) as they all tend to be expensive (with Amsterdam in the top end of that spectrum), but the smaller towns near them tend to be cheaper (or at least less expensive). And with a little munchkin, I would definitely recommend looking for a place within an hour's drive from one of the zoos :)
Simon Roper's channel is dedicated to old english; he has some videos where he reads or speaks something (there is also some videos of him in the channel of Ecolinguist)...have a look, it's impressive how close it was to Dutch (and Frisian even more).... in some videos he also explained that some words that the two languages have different it is just because the english has taken a latin word in its place, and retained the dutch word with a shifted meaning. He was giving the example of: the dutch "dier" (dutch general word for animal) -> deer (ended up indicating a specific animal)...very interesting
I'm honestly impressed! And to be fair, in the part where you got lost they were talking about things like a language garden because Ljouwert was the cultural capital. Even if you understood the words, I can imagine how it's hard to piece that together
In Friesland they’ve got many local dialects which may be very difficult to understand amongst each other. E.g. the dialect of Hindelopen is very different from Dokkums.
My husband and my family in-law are Frisian and I endeavor to speak both Nederlands and Frisian. I remember when we first met, I found it both confusing and pleasantly surprising that Friesland had its own language, history and dutch culture. When you go deeper into the history of the Netherlands and the regions you find that it is rich in its cultural heritage and diversity. I love this the most about the NL... The diversity of historical culture... The dialects and the little idiosyncrasies of the Dutch in each province or region. It's fascinating. I really hope that somehow this is not lost through tech, globalization and the general cultural attrition of time. It's a privilege to grow up in a country with such diverse cultural history. I hope my child/children will know and love the value of that one day.
I like the postive angle, yet, Frisian is Frisian, period. It stands on its own and in no way is part of Dutch culture whatever this may be, this is a thing no one knows, but me :). Dutch history started with Beeldenstorm and Statenbijbel and the need for the Bourgondian kings to have a standard language - its a foreign creation. It has no deep roots of it selve, Dutch people used to be German yet they dont want to know. Yet I like the objective tone of voice, it hardly exists and its the only way forward.
@@songsnewsmienskipbyarendar9064😊 On the contrary, my husband (&prob every Frisian in existence) shares exactly the same views☺️ He will even go as far as to saying that he's not Dutch (at all) but indeed Frisian. I understand this from the perspective that a Scot would find it almost an insult to be called English... Different language, views, values, cultural identity, perspectives, ways of life, ethics, history etc. I respect that. In my view, it is still a privilege to be part of and unified by something so beautifully rich and diverse and I hope that cultural "knowing" and appreciation isn't lost but embraced within the kingdom borders.
@@Andrea-ki9yq Yeah, in the nowwe only tollerate Dutch gouvernance, we have never been Dutch, are not Dutch and will never be. But as long as they are kind of OK, well whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......Yet if Kaag becomes prime-minister, with her anti-semetic network, I think FRL might leave yet maybe the entire Netherlands might leave the Netherlands, its a madhouse out there, deeply catholic woman with anti-semetic network highjacks secular party and plays dirty games to try and become and be prime-minister. Insane, really. Frisians dont like insanity - at all.
Scots English is different, we have won all our wars against the Hollandic people, as far as it's about Fryslâ that is, in the actual West-Friesland the Hollandic people commited genocide after a flooding when Frisians were weak, yet we won all other wars against these funny people. Then the sentiment is different, we dont care shit about them, really. We like to pretend, but we dont. Hollandic people dominante the MSM and so, yet whenever the tide gets to high, we rise up, not worried at all. The Scots lost a lot of wars, that's different. But well, whatever, its better to look at the sea then at the land, because, there are hardly any people at the sea, we dont really care about people when it comes down to it, if people leave us alone, we return the favor. More or less to put it in radical terms that is, we want our nice lifes in our villages, dont like cities, yet we do like TV and internet and so, well... You get it, I get it, most people never will and thats fine, if they get it, they can get to you and this, is a bad idea. Latersssss.
Here's one for you - a regular Frisian speaking person, usually the older generation say 50+ in some regions of Friesland will end their confirming sentences with a questioning "no?" (niet, nietwaar?). I think it's cultural, not sure. It's meaning is, I think, the validation seeking "right?" or "isn't it?" instead of the determinative "no". In short, I think it's endearing and it always makes me smile :) Note: born in Ljouwert, raised in Frentsjer.
I live in 'De Hoven', a small village on the river IJssel. On the opposite bank lies the town of Zutphen. There has been a bridge that connects De Hoven and Zutphen for centuries. I can't understand the Hoven dialect/language. Stangely Zutphens is nearly formal Dutch. Outside of Zutphen, (except De Hoven) people speak 'Achterhoeks'. These are three very distinct languages/dialects. Amazing!
It's more similar to English in pronounciation rather than the actual words. Compare Dutch, English Frisian: Kaas, cheese, tsiis Kerk, church, tsjerk The sounds are "softer" similar to English
There is a town in Washington State called Lynden that is largely populated by people of Dutch heritage. In the 70's I knew a lady from the Netherlands who lived in Lynden. She said a lot of Frisian was spoken there, and she did not understand it.
Welcome back, and great video! Apart from the intonation, there's another way to distinguish Frisian from Dutch: any word starting with a 'g' is pronounced with the g-sound of 'great', instead of a gutteral g-sound of 'gracht'. (G-sounds at the end of the word will still be gutteral in Frisian though)
Ik kan dat prima lezen, Dirkoman, maar ik denk niet dat ik het zou verstaan als je het hardop zei. Dat is namelijk wel heel erg Frysk en ik ben een Hollander.
It's so amazing to me (as a native English speaker) that Frisian is the closest relative, but I can understand the distance relative Norwegian with almost no issue whereas Frisian makes no sense to me at all
She started by speaking Dutch with a Frisian accent. Later on, she started speaking full-blown Frisian. The part you, and I, understood, in the beginning, wasn't Frisian. That's my impression anyway.
1) My thumbs up for your effort, Casey! 2) At least one "Asterix" album has been translated into Frisian: "de Ronde van Gallia" (Dutch title of the French original), using different Fridian dialects. 3) Complication: West-Friesland is part of the province of Noord-Holland (keyword: "Omringdijk"). It used to be the West of Fryslân, but centuries ago the sea separated them.
@@maxim3830 West fries is a dialect of dutch spoken in west friesland. Thoudh the english translation "west frisian" seems to refer to the Frisian language
@@idedudink3602 Indeed. In linguistics, West Frisian refers at the main dialect (subdivided into smaller dialects) as (historically) spoken west of the Lauwers, more specifically, in what is nowadays known as the province Friesland. East of the Lauwers are the regions where East Frisian/Saterlandic were spoken and North Frisian was/is spoken north east of the Lauwers.
The problem with understanding it as a native English speaker is that even if there are similarities, the language is so heavily inflected with a Dutch sounding accent that it makes it close to impossible to understand when hearing it (I'm sure reading is a different story, though). I have a bit of an Old English background and it didn't really help (though Old Frisian and Old English were relatively distinct). It reminds me a bit of an account I read where a Welsh speaker couldn't understand modern Breton despite them both being Brythonic languages. Breton simply sounded too French.
When I knew I was going to move house to Friesland I decided to use the weeks before it to take an online course Frysk. I learned to pronounce some words, but alas, when I moved home I did discover that in my little village all words were pronounced different. The I decided to take a course with AFUK, an institution to promote the speaking ( and reading ) of Frysk. But before I could do so I had a meeting with some people from my street and there a man told how he was a guest at the inauguration of the new mayor. The mayor started his speech and my neighbour said he was wondering in what language the mayor was speaking, until, so het said , the mayor was talking AFUK's ;) Btw I learned to read Frysk by pronouncing all words as if they were English speaken by a not well english educated dutch person :) So my street has a nam wei. In Dutch that would be a meadow, but in Frysk it is a variation of way.
I don’t know Dutch and I can’t understand much of what she said. I was curious about similar languages to English but it is much much different than English! Maybe if an ear is trained to pick up on the similarities it could be more understandable but that would require time spent listening with captions. Very interesting! Thanks for the video ❤
I used to live in NL (Noord Holland for 37 years) and became fluent in Dutch. I sometimes needed to go to Friesland to work and whilst everyone would talk Dutch to me, when they chatted amoung themselves, it was in Fries. I could follow what was being said much better than my non-Friesian Dutch colleages. Funny, that.
Frysian is definitely the closest Germanic language to English, so the fact that you're saying it's not very similar to English is correct, and it says something about how much English has evolved away from other Germanic languages (or degenerated 😜).
@@jiros00 Norwegian is definitely more similar because during the Viking settlement in the English isles (the vikings speaking Norse) they mingled with the Anglo Saxons (note that Old English is not mutually intelligible with Norse but somewhat mutually intelligible with Old Norse) and formed a kind of common language from the mixing of Anglo Saxon (Old English) and Norse forming, after a few centuries, early middle English. This is why Norwegian and alot of other Scandinavian languages (except Icelandic) are very similar to English is terms of grammar and some vocabulary, but Frisian is still the sister language of Old English (the are both from a branch of West Germanic Languages called Anglo Frisian)
@@tonysong7721 Sorry I can't agree Tony. English is a Germanic language in terms of grammar and structure. That's the important part. The nuts and bolts of the language. And the most commonly used words are not Latin or French (Romance languages). Furthermore note that German has a lot of Latin influence but it can hardly be called a Romance language either.
Hey Casey, I am following your channel for some time now and I am glad you are back in the Netherlands. Welcome home! Just kidding. I am trying to teach my brother-in-law (from the US) some Dutch and that's how I came across your channel. Good work! Keep it up!
My Grandparents and the whole family spoke it here in Friesland Wisconsin I always thought it was Dutch/English mix Because I could understand 79% of what they were talking about? But that could be from working on a farm where the spoke West Friesland and English?
Congrats on getting back here! Don't feel bad either. I am fluent in Dutch & Gronings (Saxon dialect), and all but fluent in English. Yet I usually have no idea what Frisians are on about. :)
Its so interesting listening to Frisian for an English speaker. Its different than listening to any other language I have no exposure to (like Greek or Russian or whatever). With Frisian my brain thinks it should understand and wants to understand what is being said, but can't for some reason. Its the oddest sensation.
Hey Casey, if you ever wanna make another video on the Frisian language, i'm a 19 year old native speaker and i was born and raised in Friesland, i would love to help out!!
‘Afuk’ is niet een normaal woord, het is de naam van een organisatie die als doel heeft om de Friese taal te promoten. De Friese mevrouw noemt ook een paar keer ‘Ljouwert’, dat is de Friese naam van de stad Leeuwarden. Edit: O, ik moet eens leren om niet meteen een reactie te typen maar eerst even de hele video af te kijken; je was hier zelf al achtergekomen. 😉 Ik woon sinds 12,5 jaar in Friesland en kan het Fries nu goed verstaan maar in het begin was het best lastig om te verstaan, veel woorden zijn gewoon zó anders dan in het Nederlands. Vooral als ik bijv. op een verjaardag was en allemaal mensen om me heen Fries zaten te praten, dan gaf ik het gewoon op, dat was niet te doen. Maar 1 op 1 was het best te doen en toen mijn (Friese) man en ik kinderen kregen en hij consequent Fries ging spreken tegen onze kinderen, ben ik het Fries nog veel beter gaan verstaan.
In 2018 was Leeuwarden, samen met de Maltese hoofdstad Valletta, Culturele hoofdstad van Europa , Heeft ze het over . Dat was wel gaaf Oa ua-cam.com/video/_m7LsnZqyVc/v-deo.html . . Speciaal voor heen geweest dat was wel erg gaaf wel super druk grtz
I'm from south africa and I'm fluent in English and a west germanic/dutch language called Afrikaans, and this Frisian language sounds like someone is speaking Afrikaans with a Dutch accent but in English syntax/structure.
American here: I was a high school exchange student in Drenthe province in 1987. Dutch was a new foreign language for me, but I think I learned a lot by listening, and watching TV programs of American shows that were subtitled into Dutch. My exposure to Fries was even more tangential in that I heard it through Dutch, and the Dutch sort of mimicking the language (goodheartedly). Compared to Dutch, I do think that Fries is easier for English speakers to understand. I've always been intrigued by both languages.
Welkom terug in Nederland, Casey. Ik kan zien hoe blij je bent, dus gefeliciteerd met je terugkeer. I'm a non-Frisian (born in Haarlem, lived there for 36 years) now living in Leeuwarden, Friesland for over 20 years, and I am reasonably proficient in English and Dutch, and I can handle passive German (reading and understanding, but not speaking or writing). When spoken, most *real* Frisian is completely beyond me. But when written, I can make out most of it because of the languages that I already know. For me. most of what Sjoukje (the lady in the video) says is quite intelligible, but sometimes I cannot make out what she's saying; I can only guess by taking the context into account. I would say that she is speaking mostly "Ljouwerts" or "Liwwadders", the city-dialect of Frisian spoken in Leeuwarden. This dialect is almost as far from Frisian as it is from Dutch, English and German. What I'm trying to say is, that I'm impressed with how much you can make of this, Casey. You do well!
Finally someone is saying it in a vídeo. Probably frisian is the closest to english, but by no means it is so the other way around. Frisian has the strong influence of two powerful languages: dutch and german.
I noticed that this particular frisian dialect sounds very dutch to me (i dont speak dutch). Other frisian dialects sounded a lot more english or even german to me.
Aww so glad that you guys made it back to the Netherlands! I cannot wait to see your future videos for footage from this amazing country because I'm moving to the Netherlands this summer! Any advice on language and renting is welcome 😅
I used to live there in Groningen but I have moved now to Medemblik. When does summer start , its so cold. I was in the Middle East for the last 11 years the cold is killing me!
I'm born in Stadskanaal (also the province of Groningen), but my parents moved to Medemblik when I was 3 months old (Baljuwstraat). But my dad missed Stadskanaal too much so they moved back. And I know the breeze from the IJsselmeer can be cold :)
@@TTTzzzz I have 0 clue, but the channel changed their programming a lot the last couple of years, so maybe it was 'let's remove everything and start from scratch'
Well i think its more just moving on, hes getting older now works at omroep max, which is basicly 2 doors down the same building.. dont think there was much bad terms.
4:40 This shows language awareness, an American/Dutch comedian aproached this one in a very different way. Its a false friend to English, in English its something very different.
Hey Casey, Welcome back!! My family in law is from Frisian origin. Dutch being my native language and being quite able in English, I still have a hard time following real Frisian. And I agree: Dutch is way more helpful then English in trying to understand the language. Looking forward to your next vid!
Als Nederlander moet ik enorm moeite doen om het Fries een beetje te verstaan terwijl ik bij Engels zelfs vaak vergeet dat ik naar een buitenlandse taal luister. Ik had ook de indruk dat die Friese dame op het eind steeds meer Nederlandse woorden ging gebruiken. Ik heb het altijd een beetje raar gevonden; een aparte officiële taal binnen zo'n klein landje. Maar goed, als ze er blij mee zijn,,, Zelf zie ik veel meer in het invoeren van Engels als officiële 2e taal, lijkt me nuttig.
Ik kom uit Groningen en kan Fries verstaan maar alleen als het rustig en langzaam gesproken wordt, zoals de vrouw in het filmpje. Dat lukt nog wel, ook al omdat sommige Friese woorden en Groningse woorden gelijk zijn. Maar als het echt plattelands-Fries is uit sommige streken van Friesland gaat het echt te snel. Fries en Nederlands zijn op zich niet mutually intelligible (weet niet de Nederlandse term). Fries is vooral gelinkt aan Oud-Engels. Maar Oud-Engels en modern Engels zijn compleet verschillende talen. Het interessante is dat Oud-Engels en modern Nederlands zelfs nog meer op elkaar lijken. Sommige oud-Engelse teksten op youtube zijn voor een Nederlander met een beetje taalgevoel best goed te volgen.
at the she says Nieuwskearig (?) nieuwsgierig, curious. The switch from to Sch to Sk also is a feature in some Brabant dilaect like Helmunds (Helmonds) Football player Willy van der Kuylen had the nickname Skiete Willy (Schieten Willy) Some Frisian speakers have a different melody or stress when speaking Dutch. for instance Foppe de Haan or Sven Kramer.
German Linguist here. There were Just few Frisians in Great Britain, who got totally assimilated by the Saxons, Jutes and Angles. The reason Frisian is so close to English is that there was a Hugh exchange between Old Frisian Old English and Old Saxon. It is fact that the closest language to Old English is Islandic followed by German because Frisian lost a lot of old grammar. But phonetically and lexically Frisian followed by Low Saxon is the closest to modern English.
Are there more than one West-Frisian languages/dialects? You placed the West Frisian in the Dutch province of Friesland. I live in the Dutch province of North-Holland, in the Zaanstreek. The Northern part of that province is called West-Friesland with their own West-Frisian dialect. When you look at the map where the Frisians were living, when the Zuiderzee (Southern sea) now IJsselmeer was not formed yet. it's correct to call the North-Holland part West-Friesland. Btw I loved what you were doing. I think it's also stimulating for native English speakers to be aware Dutch, Frisian and German are not super difficult totally different languages to English, but the matter of fact are sibling languages and the most words they already know by sound and intonation. The same time I think it's one of the reasons so many Dutch speak English quite well. Thanks.
I could follow most of it because this might be a bit more standardized Frisian. But when I was in Friesland for a few months, it was much harder to comprehend. When they are among each other just chatting away in their own dialect, I'm totally lost.
Yep,regained it, this was in the same time when Jezus was doing his preaching, Id allmost say we practised what he preached - all roman tax collectors: hang up in the trees. Battle of Badhenna. Yet Jezus showed the anger and Frisians (Frissi) did not get angry - they got even. Im against violence, yet they wanted the Frisian women and then you are dead.
@@torpidcloud there is Latin influence but not directly. Because dutch was influenced more by French and Latin over the years and Dutch has influence over Frisian.
Welkom! Bij je openingsshot dacht ik meteen: dat is geen Australië! En dan ben je terug en duik je niet in het Nederlands maar in het Fries, grappig. Fries heeft deels een heel andere uitspraak dan Nederlands. Alleen als je oud-Fries met oud-Engels vergelijkt zie je hun overeenkomst. Fries zit dan soms tussen Engels en Nederlands in, heeft sommige klankveranderingen samen met het Engels gedaan en is daarna pas sterk door het Nederlands beïnvloed. Church - tsjerke - kerk.
En bij woorden als kaai (key, sleutel in het Nederlands), of ko (cow) en kei (cows, in Old English this used to be kye), of tsiis (cheese, also pronounced as cheese, in Dutch this is called kaas)
Reading some other comments I think it must be the syntax that is similar to English BUT to understand the actual words at all you must need to be able to speak Dutch. I don't speak any Dutch so does that sound about right ??
I know an okay amount of Old English and no Dutch, and written West Frisian often makes some sense to me, but it's almost completely incomprehensible when it's spoken. It's gone through a lot of the same sound changes that Dutch and the other continental West Germanic languages have, and has quite a few loanwords from it too, which has made the connection to English way less obvious. The closeness to English is really only obvious with cherry-picked sentences, or if you compare Old Frisian to Old English. If you know OE, your brain will just autocorrect 95% of OF to that, hah.
In Hindeloopen (stad in Friesland) spreken ze een dialect dat nog meer op het Oud Engels lijkt dan het Fries dat nu grotendeels wordt gesproken, en dat dialect, 'hylpers', is voor een 'gewone' fries heel moeilijk te verstaan
The word you were looking for is “nijsgjirrich” (nieuwsgierig/geinteresseerd). In Danish, this is the same word: “nysgerrig”. And in German “neugierig”. It means to have a craving for news. Welcome back btw 🎉
@@Meine.Postma Well it means both. At 7:04 she says "dat is hiel nijsgjirrich", which means "that is very interesting"; at 7:06 she says "foar minsken dy't der nijsgjirrich nei binne", meaning "for people who are interested/curious". It depends on the context.
I learn dutch. But i speak hindi naively. all three are indo-european but hindi being more conservative while i learning dutch i learned through English as more material is for dutch in english but on comapring with dutch its way more similar in base indo-european vocabulary and the pronunciation of g is hard for english speaker but at starting it was hard for me as i was making the gh sound continuously which is a aspirated g sound. but when i learned that its a fricative i started to add some space in the glotis ending it right. but in frisian its not the case i found it easy for me as all the sound match with my dialect of hindi.
Great video and also great effort with your translation. I think you we're struggling with the word 'nijskearrig' (pronounced: neye-skj-ear-ichh) which means curious
'Bûter, brea en griene tsiis, wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries', is a very famous Frisian saying. There are examples on youtube how to pronounce it. The first part means 'Butter, bread and green cheese' and sound a lot more English than Dutch. Another interesting video is about an Old-English speaker who was talking to a Frisian (also on youtube, and I believe they were talking about a cow).
The cow video I saw after filming this and stumbling across other people that may have done a similar type of video. I'll have to hunt the first one down
@@caseykilmore It's an historical thing related to Grutte Pier. My grandmother is Frisian, so I understand everything but I don't speak it. (I do speak several other dialects). The dialect that I use the most is Gronings (but I live in Drenthe). Gronings is a lower saxon dialect with Frisian influences, and since I understand both it isn't that hard to understand old English.
Old English used a lot of case endings to nouns and verbs like Germanic languages do today before dropping a lot of it and simply adding prepositions and determiners. I’m wondering if we kept the Old English style of speaking, or shifted to Anglish (the created form of Germanic English away from the Romance modification) if Frisian would be more comprehensible
As a Friesian born person living in Canada I understood most of what she said, but even I have to pay close attention. The word you really had trouble with is the Friesian word for Curious.
hmmmmm misschien een leuk film idee! Ik moet wat limburgs audio vinden waar ik kan op reageren maar ik zou het zeker aan de lijst zetten je bent niet de eerste persoon om dit te suggereren. Echt top!
Welkom terug! Zolang een Fries langzaam praat kan iedereen die Nederlands spreekt ze wel verstaan, maar gooi er wat Beerenburg in en niemand verstaat ze nog.
@@toqtoq3361 als drent met friese familie kan ik inderdaad bevestigen dat mensen die snel fries praten echt niet te volgen zijn. en ik heb al van jongs af aan mijn pake en beppe fries tegen mij horen praten, maar friezen die snel praten zijn niet te volgen.
Oh dear 😓 I only speak English and I had not a clue what was being said. I recognised no words at all. Was hoping to maybe get a couple of words . I agree it must be closer to Dutch because you did far far better than I did by a 100%
The word in fries for cow is cow mv cows in fr kei. The key is also kei in fr. The frisian language has very much proverbs. When you are jobless it is called in fr op é dyk. to be on the dyke means one is looking for a job and there was in earlier days the only place to find a job, because all the land was very watery.
Why so? I'm a native English speaker and yet can switch between English, Afrikaans and Zulu without an accent. Let's say I can speak Afrikaans and Zulu over the phone to a native speaker of both those, and have them thinking I'm one of them. Nothing special about that either.
AFûk = Algemiene Fryske Ûnderrjocht Kommisje = General Frisian Education Committee. Nijskjirrich = litteraly translation = nosy. Other meaning in Frisian of nijskjirrich : interesting! Litteraly translation in Dutch of the word nieuwsgierig = news and "gierig" in the meaning of "to be eager for".
Hi Casey 😀. I'm Dutch by birth, but I've been Anglophone after. I'm fluent in Dutch, I have to believe, but when it comes to Fries I also have a problem... Despite me being supposedly Frisian. Lovely thing though I wish to add is how friendly and inviting the music 🎶 in this lady's voice was though ☺️
Frisian linguist here! I love that you did this video, thank you so much for acknowledging the Frisian language! I wanted to give some additional info on the history: so Old English and Old Frisian are nearly identical and that's because the Frisians traveled along with the Angles and Saxons to England and the mix was the origin of the language. Old English and Old Frisian went through a lot of the same processes of language change (you can look up word pairs that are nearly identical in Frisian and English and not with Dutch and German), but then English was influenced a lot by Norman French and Old Norse, whereas Old Frisian remained in contact with Saxon (Low German) and Low Franconian (Dutch). However, Old English is so different from Modern English, that you wouldn't be able to understand it at all, actually, in my Old English class the Frisians had a leg up, then the Dutch kids, and then the native English speakers! That's why it's technically the closest relative to English alive, but resembles Dutch and German much more and English speakers struggle with understanding it without knowledge of a continental Germanic language like Dutch and German. HOWEVER! You absolutely did a great job using the mutual intelligibility of both your languages here and I love these kinds of experiments
It's only now that I've realised that Friesan is ridiculously close to my dialect. I'm from Cumbria North West England and we still have a lot of Old English in our dialect and listening to how Friesan is spoken it is so close to how we speak that it blew my mind when I heard it!
@@Electric_Campfire I love that! I haven't ever heard Cumbrian dialects, but I've heard some other Northumbrian and South Scottish speakers who sounded like family when I'm not paying attention! Southern English dialects have diverged a lot more in pronunciation than the areas in the north that also retained a lot of the Danelaw vocab and sounds. I'd love to hear more Cumbrian, I'll see if I can find some resources :D!
This coment is just amazingly clarifying to some questions I still had about Old English Old Low Frankonian and, I didn't know, also about Old Frisian.
Thanks a lot!
I'm a native English speaker but I can only make sense of Old English using my German.
I had read some years ago that many young people in Germany weren't learning and using the Frisian their families used and rejected Frisian and didn't bother with it at all. I don't know if it has also dropped from popularity in the Netherlands though.
Old English and old frisian were dialects of the same language, english after 1066 was strongly influenced by French, Frisian by Dutch and low-german.. so they grew appart :)
Not to mention English dropping it's case system, grammatical gender, and the great vowel shift...
@@isaac4273 the Frisians had the same vowel shift..
@@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands really? Wow I didn't know
English was heavily influenced by Norse settlers. We not only borrowed many Norse words, but took up a lot of Norse syntax. English is more like Norwegian in syntax than like Dutch.
@@himbo754 there are many English words similar to Latin languages like French or Spanish
I think the language spectrum is; English - Northern English - Scottish Standard English - Scots - Frisian - Dutch - Plaatdeutche - German. When I was learning Scots about 8 years ago I quickly found that some sentences in Scots were understandable in Dutch or German but definitely not in English. It seems though that some areas of Scots are closer to English and some to Dutch/Frisian/Danish.
Scots is an only partially standardised language, so you get words spelled, huis, muis, buik, shuin/shoen. Some follow English spelling on the page, like "ten" but it is pronounced as two syllables "ti" + "en" so should be written "tien" like in Dutch. To me it seems like many words to have a little gap in the middle like there is a "g" missing, so maybe was originally "tigen". That would fit with Indo-European "dekem". My spelling of Scots numbers would be, ane, twae, thrie, fier, fyfe, sax, zievin, eicht, niyen, tiyen, elf, twaal, thrietien - hunner, thoozend, muil'li'oen. So you can see more similarity with Dutch there immediately.
The sound "uil" is Gaelic and has to be learned. Though it seems to occupy the same position as an "oel" sound in Dutch. You get it in the Scots words "muilk" = milk and "muillin" = mill. The sound spelled "ui" in other words sounds a bit like a stressed "i" or "ee" sound. The word fro school, "schuil" can sound like "skill" or in some areas like "squeal". Scots tend to say "sch" as SK not "sh" as English speakers do.
Of course Scots also has a lot of Gaelic pronunciation, vocabulary and forms as well that are unrelated to any of these.
Lowland Scottish, was heavily influenced by the language of the Danelaw with its Scandinavian forms. We can still see this in the language, eg: shirt (OE), skirt (Danelaw) is Dutch schort. Also, a more archaic form of Frisian can be heard in the pronunciation on the Frisian islands, like Terschelling or Ameland.
Great video. I’m Dutch but lived in England and USA when I was young.
I have a friend who lived in Friesland and I heard them speak Friesain with hardly any Dutch and somehow I understood what was said. Not exactly word for word but I knew wat they were saying. Friesain has the same sintax just like English. Nouns and verbs at the same place.
born a "deep-fries" i grew up bilingual; i moved to the west long time ago and noticed the erosion of my frysk. I keep it sort of, up to date by tuning in to Omrop Fryslan ....it usually polishes up my diminishing fryske vocabulary and always brings the smile of recognition to my face.
my kids were born in friesland, heerenveen. the workers in that hospital were awesome.
It's more related to English, not in the way that you can understand either with only knowing one, but there are more links etymologically, but that doesn't always result in being able to understand it haha.
Also I can't recommend Zuid Limburg enough, it's in The Netherlands, but it feels like being on vacation, I moved here 1,5 years ago and didn't regret it!
In the Netherlands, Westfries means the head of North Holland.
Not the entirely head of North-Holland, but the part inside the 'Westfriese Omringdijk', a 126 km long dike from Alkmaar-Schagen-Medemblik-Enkhuizen-Hoorn-Alkmaar. Long ago Friesland and North-Holland fitted together. There was no Zuiderzee (nowadays IJsselmeer). In the 10th century the water came closer and closer and apperently the Zuiderzee was there.
@@donarnoldus7884 Not only that, Frysia as a region/culture predates Holland, let alone North Holland. This was the western part of Frysia in the Middle Ages. Of course Frysia was also the western part of the Frysian larger culture group so it gets confusing. So Alkmaar-Schagen-Medemblik-Enkhuizen-Hoorn-Alkmaar are the western part of Western Frysia.
@@donarnoldus7884 The geographical location of Westfriesland is within the Omringdijk. However the dialect is spoken in the entire North of North-Holland, this includes the distinct Eiland-Westfries which is spoken on Texel, Wieringen, Enkhuizen and even Vlieland.
@@bvanbiezen3008 Den Helder is or might be Hollandic, it grew because of the navy-base. "It's complicated :)". Texel is as "Westfries" as it gets :). Yet its not in what people call "Westfriesland" today. Language situation in the part of The Netherlands which right now is officially named "Noord-Holland" is fun, really. Volendams has a lot in common with actual Frisian, yet these people do not consider themselves to be anything but "Volendams" and Dutch.
@@bvanbiezen3008 I didn't know this, then it's similar to all places north of the old IJ bay shore, it say all started Frisian. Even Amsterdam once was Frisian, it was on a terp just north of the shores of IJ bay a long time ago, something in that corner. Castriucum might be even older then the Frisians, it might have been be Celtic in it's oldest days, yet overal all ground north of IJbay is Frisian and stolen from them in the late 12th century. Which in Frisian history is relative recent.
A heart-felt thankyou for this video, from an Aussie.
I happen to speak fluent Frisian, I even took Frisian as a final exam (vwo). There are a lot of similarities between English and Frisian (kaai/key, widdo/widow, swiet/sweet, dream/dream, etc) but if you only know English, you’ll be lost when hearing Frisian 🙈 What would be a better experiment, would be to listen to ‘Wêr bisto’ by the group Twarres’. It is very clearly sung word for word, and you’ll easily pick out a couple of similarities with English.
Good recommendation, plus it's a beautiful song to listen to :)
@stephandevos4246
You are 100% right.
I only speak modern English and I did not recognise a single word or have any idea even to what she was speaking about.
I don't speak French or German either but I find it easier to guess at least the subject being spoken about in those languages.
Wow, I don't know any Frisian, but I found it quite easy to understand this lady
That's because she doesn't speak real Frisian. What Sjoukje is actually speaking, is "stads-Fries", a dialect mostly used in Leeuwarden, also called Ljouwerts or Liwwadders. Most of stads-Fries is not hard to follow, especially if you understand English and/or German as well.
@@bobosims1848 ah, I see
@@joriskbos1115 Khnor boken dighn wutht dou nhiegh hienyree wut did I just say than?
@@bobosims1848 more like especially if you understand dutch and/or english well
Same
As a proud Frisian, I like to hear more about the connection between English and Frisian. I always thought you could see the connection in the words, especcially when you put German next to it. Example: Englisch + Frisian vs Dutch + German > key + kaai vs sleutel + Schlüssel or horse + hynder vs paard + pferd.
Luttel but genôch Anglo Saxon +/- 1/3...
Another amazing thing is that Frisian also has "hoars" which is kind of old-fashioned/archaic and only exists in compound words nowadays like "nylhoars" for hippo (literally "Nile horse").
Horse and hynder aren't cognates, hynder is from hynst "stallion" + dier "animal"
My family is from North Belgium, my grandparents spoke it. I speak it, but I understand it better. Good video!
Ik doe het in het Nederlands, want dat kan je prima, weet ik. Ik koe it ek yn it Frysk dwaan, mar dan begrypst my net, tink ik. Het Fries ligt tussen het Nederlands en het Engels in. Het vermoeden bestaat dat (heeeel lang geleden) Friezen de oversteek naar Engeland hebben gemaakt en dat hun taal het fundament voor het Angels (Engels) is. Latere inmenging van Frans en Noors/Deens hebben en ook eeuwen van gebruik hebben de taal ver van het (zich apart verder ontwikkelende) Fries verwijderd. Overigens spreekt Froukje Stadsfries. Dat is voor een Nederlander nog goed te volgen. Als je aan het fries wil wennen, kan je ervoor kiezen op de radio naar Omrop Fryslân te luisteren. Zo pik je het gaandeweg op.
Leuk dat jullie terug zijn! Veel succes!
Yes, Frisian does sound similar to Old English. I took a course in college called linguistics and it dealt with the origins of the English language. It began with Anglo-Saxon, and then combined with Old Norse to form Old English. Then Middle English, and then Elizabethan English which was the time of William Shakespeare. Those of us who are English speakers can still understand Elizabethan English although. I'm 75% of Scots-Irish descent, but my maternal grandfather was of Flemish-Dutch descent. I can remember him speaking in Flemish and Dutch, and he also could speak some German and French.
English is a very popular second language in Holland and Flanders. But they speak the American dialect of English rather than the British dialect of English. I have distant cousins who live in Flanders, and they say English is very easy for them to learn.
Great vid! Speaking of the similarities between Frisian and English or Frisian and Dutch. I actually had a Dutch person in Maastricht ask me something in English as he thought he overheard me and my family talking to each other in English while we were actually just speaking Frisian😂 You should’ve seen his face when we replied in perfect Dutch😄
@femke576
As someone who only speaks English I had no idea at all about what was being said.
I cannot understand how a Dutch person overhearing Frsian could possibly mistake it for English. You must HAVE to know Dutch to see that because for me I would have been no worse off if it was Chinese 🙄
Welcome back.
Frisian/Fries (and this lady, Sjoukje, was speaking Fries, not West-Fries which is spoken in the top of Noord-Holland) can be tricky, I grew up hearing my Mum speaking Frisian with her Mum and siblings, and unless I'm actively trying to figure out what they're saying I only understand half of it all :)
When looking for a new home, avoid the larger cities themselves (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag) as they all tend to be expensive (with Amsterdam in the top end of that spectrum), but the smaller towns near them tend to be cheaper (or at least less expensive). And with a little munchkin, I would definitely recommend looking for a place within an hour's drive from one of the zoos :)
I have several degrees and can understand middle english 1300s if read slowly. I can sometimes read old English
Simon Roper's channel is dedicated to old english; he has some videos where he reads or speaks something (there is also some videos of him in the channel of Ecolinguist)...have a look, it's impressive how close it was to Dutch (and Frisian even more).... in some videos he also explained that some words that the two languages have different it is just because the english has taken a latin word in its place, and retained the dutch word with a shifted meaning. He was giving the example of: the dutch "dier" (dutch general word for animal) -> deer (ended up indicating a specific animal)...very interesting
1:17 the marker is in the wrong place, North Frisian is more northern just south of the Danish border.
0:12 you didn't have to tell you got back home. I immediately knew that this path was in the Netherlands and not anywhere else. LOL Welcome back!
Seeing Piet Paulusma pop up at around 2:00 made me tear up a little not gonna lie. RIP ❤️
I'm honestly impressed! And to be fair, in the part where you got lost they were talking about things like a language garden because Ljouwert was the cultural capital. Even if you understood the words, I can imagine how it's hard to piece that together
In Friesland they’ve got many local dialects which may be very difficult to understand amongst each other. E.g. the dialect of Hindelopen is very different from Dokkums.
As a speaker of Low-saxon dialects and Dutch I have the same problems as you with Frisian..
correction: West Frisian is spoken in and around Enkhuizen, province of North-Holland. Frisian is for the province of Friesland only.
Wow, your face is radiating happiness! Welcome back.
My husband and my family in-law are Frisian and I endeavor to speak both Nederlands and Frisian. I remember when we first met, I found it both confusing and pleasantly surprising that Friesland had its own language, history and dutch culture. When you go deeper into the history of the Netherlands and the regions you find that it is rich in its cultural heritage and diversity. I love this the most about the NL... The diversity of historical culture... The dialects and the little idiosyncrasies of the Dutch in each province or region. It's fascinating. I really hope that somehow this is not lost through tech, globalization and the general cultural attrition of time. It's a privilege to grow up in a country with such diverse cultural history. I hope my child/children will know and love the value of that one day.
Will respond later, nice comment :)
I like the postive angle, yet, Frisian is Frisian, period. It stands on its own and in no way is part of Dutch culture whatever this may be, this is a thing no one knows, but me :). Dutch history started with Beeldenstorm and Statenbijbel and the need for the Bourgondian kings to have a standard language - its a foreign creation. It has no deep roots of it selve, Dutch people used to be German yet they dont want to know. Yet I like the objective tone of voice, it hardly exists and its the only way forward.
@@songsnewsmienskipbyarendar9064😊 On the contrary, my husband (&prob every Frisian in existence) shares exactly the same views☺️ He will even go as far as to saying that he's not Dutch (at all) but indeed Frisian. I understand this from the perspective that a Scot would find it almost an insult to be called English... Different language, views, values, cultural identity, perspectives, ways of life, ethics, history etc. I respect that. In my view, it is still a privilege to be part of and unified by something so beautifully rich and diverse and I hope that cultural "knowing" and appreciation isn't lost but embraced within the kingdom borders.
@@Andrea-ki9yq Yeah, in the nowwe only tollerate Dutch gouvernance, we have never been Dutch, are not Dutch and will never be. But as long as they are kind of OK, well whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......Yet if Kaag becomes prime-minister, with her anti-semetic network, I think FRL might leave yet maybe the entire Netherlands might leave the Netherlands, its a madhouse out there, deeply catholic woman with anti-semetic network highjacks secular party and plays dirty games to try and become and be prime-minister. Insane, really. Frisians dont like insanity - at all.
Scots English is different, we have won all our wars against the Hollandic people, as far as it's about Fryslâ that is, in the actual West-Friesland the Hollandic people commited genocide after a flooding when Frisians were weak, yet we won all other wars against these funny people. Then the sentiment is different, we dont care shit about them, really. We like to pretend, but we dont. Hollandic people dominante the MSM and so, yet whenever the tide gets to high, we rise up, not worried at all. The Scots lost a lot of wars, that's different. But well, whatever, its better to look at the sea then at the land, because, there are hardly any people at the sea, we dont really care about people when it comes down to it, if people leave us alone, we return the favor. More or less to put it in radical terms that is, we want our nice lifes in our villages, dont like cities, yet we do like TV and internet and so, well... You get it, I get it, most people never will and thats fine, if they get it, they can get to you and this, is a bad idea. Latersssss.
Here's one for you - a regular Frisian speaking person, usually the older generation say 50+ in some regions of Friesland will end their confirming sentences with a questioning "no?" (niet, nietwaar?). I think it's cultural, not sure. It's meaning is, I think, the validation seeking "right?" or "isn't it?" instead of the determinative "no".
In short, I think it's endearing and it always makes me smile :) Note: born in Ljouwert, raised in Frentsjer.
That’s not entirely unheard of in the English speaking world.
Similar to the Canadian "eh"
I live in 'De Hoven', a small village on the river IJssel. On the opposite bank lies the town of Zutphen. There has been a bridge that connects De Hoven and Zutphen for centuries. I can't understand the Hoven dialect/language. Stangely Zutphens is nearly formal Dutch. Outside of Zutphen, (except De Hoven) people speak 'Achterhoeks'. These are three very distinct languages/dialects. Amazing!
Fascinating
It's more similar to English in pronounciation rather than the actual words. Compare Dutch, English Frisian:
Kaas, cheese, tsiis
Kerk, church, tsjerk
The sounds are "softer" similar to English
There is a town in Washington State called Lynden that is largely populated by people of Dutch heritage. In the 70's I knew a lady from the Netherlands who lived in Lynden. She said a lot of Frisian was spoken there, and she did not understand it.
Welcome back, and great video!
Apart from the intonation, there's another way to distinguish Frisian from Dutch: any word starting with a 'g' is pronounced with the g-sound of 'great', instead of a gutteral g-sound of 'gracht'. (G-sounds at the end of the word will still be gutteral in Frisian though)
Awesome that you guys are back!
Do hast wol gelyk by eintsje beslút tink ik. As'to nog gjin Heechhaarlemmerdyks kinst wurdt it wol hiel dreech Frysk te ferstean.
Ik kan dat prima lezen, Dirkoman, maar ik denk niet dat ik het zou verstaan als je het hardop zei. Dat is namelijk wel heel erg Frysk en ik ben een Hollander.
It's so amazing to me (as a native English speaker) that Frisian is the closest relative, but I can understand the distance relative Norwegian with almost no issue whereas Frisian makes no sense to me at all
She started by speaking Dutch with a Frisian accent. Later on, she started speaking full-blown Frisian. The part you, and I, understood, in the beginning, wasn't Frisian. That's my impression anyway.
1) My thumbs up for your effort, Casey!
2) At least one "Asterix" album has been translated into Frisian: "de Ronde van Gallia" (Dutch title of the French original), using different Fridian dialects.
3) Complication: West-Friesland is part of the province of Noord-Holland (keyword: "Omringdijk"). It used to be the West of Fryslân, but centuries ago the sea separated them.
West-Friesland indicates a region in Noord-Holland. West-Frisian indicates a Frisian dialect (as spoken in the province Friesland), though.
@@maxim3830 West fries is a dialect of dutch spoken in west friesland. Thoudh the english translation "west frisian" seems to refer to the Frisian language
@@idedudink3602 Indeed. In linguistics, West Frisian refers at the main dialect (subdivided into smaller dialects) as (historically) spoken west of the Lauwers, more specifically, in what is nowadays known as the province Friesland. East of the Lauwers are the regions where East Frisian/Saterlandic were spoken and North Frisian was/is spoken north east of the Lauwers.
The problem with understanding it as a native English speaker is that even if there are similarities, the language is so heavily inflected with a Dutch sounding accent that it makes it close to impossible to understand when hearing it (I'm sure reading is a different story, though). I have a bit of an Old English background and it didn't really help (though Old Frisian and Old English were relatively distinct).
It reminds me a bit of an account I read where a Welsh speaker couldn't understand modern Breton despite them both being Brythonic languages. Breton simply sounded too French.
When I knew I was going to move house to Friesland I decided to use the weeks before it to take an online course Frysk. I learned to pronounce some words, but alas, when I moved home I did discover that in my little village all words were pronounced different.
The I decided to take a course with AFUK, an institution to promote the speaking ( and reading ) of Frysk. But before I could do so I had a meeting with some people from my street and there a man told how he was a guest at the inauguration of the new mayor. The mayor started his speech and my neighbour said he was wondering in what language the mayor was speaking, until, so het said , the mayor was talking AFUK's ;) Btw I learned to read Frysk by pronouncing all words as if they were English speaken by a not well english educated dutch person :) So my street has a nam wei. In Dutch that would be a meadow, but in Frysk it is a variation of way.
I don’t know Dutch and I can’t understand much of what she said. I was curious about similar languages to English but it is much much different than English! Maybe if an ear is trained to pick up on the similarities it could be more understandable but that would require time spent listening with captions. Very interesting! Thanks for the video ❤
I used to live in NL (Noord Holland for 37 years) and became fluent in Dutch. I sometimes needed to go to Friesland to work and whilst everyone would talk Dutch to me, when they chatted amoung themselves, it was in Fries. I could follow what was being said much better than my non-Friesian Dutch colleages. Funny, that.
Frysian is definitely the closest Germanic language to English, so the fact that you're saying it's not very similar to English is correct, and it says something about how much English has evolved away from other Germanic languages (or degenerated 😜).
OK, Frisian got sooo much influence from dutch, it's pretty much just a version of dutch at this point.
Compare to PURE Frisian.
I'd argue that Norwegian is a bit closer because the grammar and language structure are closer.
@@jiros00 Norwegian is definitely more similar because during the Viking settlement in the English isles (the vikings speaking Norse) they mingled with the Anglo Saxons (note that Old English is not mutually intelligible with Norse but somewhat mutually intelligible with Old Norse) and formed a kind of common language from the mixing of Anglo Saxon (Old English) and Norse forming, after a few centuries, early middle English. This is why Norwegian and alot of other Scandinavian languages (except Icelandic) are very similar to English is terms of grammar and some vocabulary, but Frisian is still the sister language of Old English (the are both from a branch of West Germanic Languages called Anglo Frisian)
English is basically a Romance language with Germanic grammar, nearly 60% words are from Romance language
@@tonysong7721 Sorry I can't agree Tony. English is a Germanic language in terms of grammar and structure. That's the important part. The nuts and bolts of the language. And the most commonly used words are not Latin or French (Romance languages). Furthermore note that German has a lot of Latin influence but it can hardly be called a Romance language either.
I'm impressed by what you know about Friesland and our language :) Thanks for the video.
Hey Casey, I am following your channel for some time now and I am glad you are back in the Netherlands.
Welcome home!
Just kidding. I am trying to teach my brother-in-law (from the US) some Dutch and that's how I came across your channel.
Good work! Keep it up!
My Grandparents and the whole family spoke it here in Friesland Wisconsin I always thought it was Dutch/English mix Because I could understand 79% of what they were talking about? But that could be from working on a farm where the spoke West Friesland and English?
Congrats on getting back here! Don't feel bad either. I am fluent in Dutch & Gronings (Saxon dialect), and all but fluent in English. Yet I usually have no idea what Frisians are on about. :)
Its so interesting listening to Frisian for an English speaker. Its different than listening to any other language I have no exposure to (like Greek or Russian or whatever). With Frisian my brain thinks it should understand and wants to understand what is being said, but can't for some reason. Its the oddest sensation.
Welkom! Glad you are back, the weather is much better now
Hey Casey, if you ever wanna make another video on the Frisian language, i'm a 19 year old native speaker and i was born and raised in Friesland, i would love to help out!!
i'm also fluent in English and Dutch & would love to answer any questions you have about the culture/language
‘Afuk’ is niet een normaal woord, het is de naam van een organisatie die als doel heeft om de Friese taal te promoten. De Friese mevrouw noemt ook een paar keer ‘Ljouwert’, dat is de Friese naam van de stad Leeuwarden.
Edit: O, ik moet eens leren om niet meteen een reactie te typen maar eerst even de hele video af te kijken; je was hier zelf al achtergekomen. 😉
Ik woon sinds 12,5 jaar in Friesland en kan het Fries nu goed verstaan maar in het begin was het best lastig om te verstaan, veel woorden zijn gewoon zó anders dan in het Nederlands. Vooral als ik bijv. op een verjaardag was en allemaal mensen om me heen Fries zaten te praten, dan gaf ik het gewoon op, dat was niet te doen. Maar 1 op 1 was het best te doen en toen mijn (Friese) man en ik kinderen kregen en hij consequent Fries ging spreken tegen onze kinderen, ben ik het Fries nog veel beter gaan verstaan.
Ik begon ook al te typen maar las gelukkig jouw comment
It’s weird how I can partially understand this and I don’t speak Frisian
In 2018 was Leeuwarden, samen met de Maltese hoofdstad Valletta, Culturele hoofdstad van Europa , Heeft ze het over . Dat was wel gaaf Oa ua-cam.com/video/_m7LsnZqyVc/v-deo.html . . Speciaal voor heen geweest dat was wel erg gaaf wel super druk grtz
Afûk is met een dakje ;) En Leeuwarden is nu de Nederlandse naam maar het woord zelf heeft net zo goed Friese roots.
In het noord oosten van Duitsland spreken ze geen Fries, het lijkt meer op het Gronings/Drents.
I'm from south africa and I'm fluent in English and a west germanic/dutch language called Afrikaans, and this Frisian language sounds like someone is speaking Afrikaans with a Dutch accent but in English syntax/structure.
American here: I was a high school exchange student in Drenthe province in 1987. Dutch was a new foreign language for me, but I think I learned a lot by listening, and watching TV programs of American shows that were subtitled into Dutch. My exposure to Fries was even more tangential in that I heard it through Dutch, and the Dutch sort of mimicking the language (goodheartedly). Compared to Dutch, I do think that Fries is easier for English speakers to understand. I've always been intrigued by both languages.
Can you take a Frisian Language exam ? Just like is it for IELTS/Cambridge for English language ?
Love the video. As a Dutchman with a Frisian great grandmother I Learn a lot from this. Never mind the AFOK. We do not know either 😂😂😂❤
Welkom terug in Nederland, Casey. Ik kan zien hoe blij je bent, dus gefeliciteerd met je terugkeer.
I'm a non-Frisian (born in Haarlem, lived there for 36 years) now living in Leeuwarden, Friesland for over 20 years, and I am reasonably proficient in English and Dutch, and I can handle passive German (reading and understanding, but not speaking or writing).
When spoken, most *real* Frisian is completely beyond me. But when written, I can make out most of it because of the languages that I already know.
For me. most of what Sjoukje (the lady in the video) says is quite intelligible, but sometimes I cannot make out what she's saying; I can only guess by taking the context into account. I would say that she is speaking mostly "Ljouwerts" or "Liwwadders", the city-dialect of Frisian spoken in Leeuwarden. This dialect is almost as far from Frisian as it is from Dutch, English and German.
What I'm trying to say is, that I'm impressed with how much you can make of this, Casey. You do well!
Finally someone is saying it in a vídeo. Probably frisian is the closest to english, but by no means it is so the other way around. Frisian has the strong influence of two powerful languages: dutch and german.
Very interesting video! And the comments below are insightful. Thanks for sharing!
I noticed that this particular frisian dialect sounds very dutch to me (i dont speak dutch). Other frisian dialects sounded a lot more english or even german to me.
Your doing a pretty good job at this!
Aww so glad that you guys made it back to the Netherlands! I cannot wait to see your future videos for footage from this amazing country because I'm moving to the Netherlands this summer! Any advice on language and renting is welcome 😅
I used to live there in Groningen but I have moved now to Medemblik. When does summer start , its so cold. I was in the Middle East for the last 11 years the cold is killing me!
I'm born in Stadskanaal (also the province of Groningen), but my parents moved to Medemblik when I was 3 months old (Baljuwstraat). But my dad missed Stadskanaal too much so they moved back. And I know the breeze from the IJsselmeer can be cold :)
0:32 Fries is Dutch, "Frysk" is Frisian
still mad Piet Paulusma got fired, and I'm not even Frisian, glad he could chill on your shoulder for a hot sec
Why did he get fired?
@@TTTzzzz I have 0 clue, but the channel changed their programming a lot the last couple of years, so maybe it was 'let's remove everything and start from scratch'
Well i think its more just moving on, hes getting older now works at omroep max, which is basicly 2 doors down the same building.. dont think there was much bad terms.
4:40 This shows language awareness, an American/Dutch comedian aproached this one in a very different way. Its a false friend to English, in English its something very different.
I got lost at the same time as you, and I’m Dutch hahahah... I constantly think I understand, but I just don’t
Hey Casey, Welcome back!!
My family in law is from Frisian origin. Dutch being my native language and being quite able in English, I still have a hard time following real Frisian. And I agree: Dutch is way more helpful then English in trying to understand the language.
Looking forward to your next vid!
Ayo are you a viking
Shout out to the frisian community
You should check out some pop songs in Frisian:
Twarres - Wer bisto
De Kast - In nije dei
Ik wou het net gaan zeggen haha
Piter Wilkens
Klinkhamer!!
Als Nederlander moet ik enorm moeite doen om het Fries een beetje te verstaan terwijl ik bij Engels zelfs vaak vergeet dat ik naar een buitenlandse taal luister. Ik had ook de indruk dat die Friese dame op het eind steeds meer Nederlandse woorden ging gebruiken. Ik heb het altijd een beetje raar gevonden; een aparte officiële taal binnen zo'n klein landje. Maar goed, als ze er blij mee zijn,,, Zelf zie ik veel meer in het invoeren van Engels als officiële 2e taal, lijkt me nuttig.
Ik kom uit Groningen en kan Fries verstaan maar alleen als het rustig en langzaam gesproken wordt, zoals de vrouw in het filmpje. Dat lukt nog wel, ook al omdat sommige Friese woorden en Groningse woorden gelijk zijn. Maar als het echt plattelands-Fries is uit sommige streken van Friesland gaat het echt te snel. Fries en Nederlands zijn op zich niet mutually intelligible (weet niet de Nederlandse term).
Fries is vooral gelinkt aan Oud-Engels. Maar Oud-Engels en modern Engels zijn compleet verschillende talen. Het interessante is dat Oud-Engels en modern Nederlands zelfs nog meer op elkaar lijken. Sommige oud-Engelse teksten op youtube zijn voor een Nederlander met een beetje taalgevoel best goed te volgen.
at the she says Nieuwskearig (?) nieuwsgierig, curious. The switch from to Sch to Sk also is a feature in some Brabant dilaect like Helmunds (Helmonds) Football player Willy van der Kuylen had the nickname Skiete Willy (Schieten Willy) Some Frisian speakers have a different melody or stress when speaking Dutch. for instance Foppe de Haan or Sven Kramer.
Such a beautiful language.
German Linguist here. There were Just few Frisians in Great Britain, who got totally assimilated by the Saxons, Jutes and Angles. The reason Frisian is so close to English is that there was a Hugh exchange between Old Frisian Old English and Old Saxon. It is fact that the closest language to Old English is Islandic followed by German because Frisian lost a lot of old grammar. But phonetically and lexically Frisian followed by Low Saxon is the closest to modern English.
Are there more than one West-Frisian languages/dialects? You placed the West Frisian in the Dutch province of Friesland. I live in the Dutch province of North-Holland, in the Zaanstreek. The Northern part of that province is called West-Friesland with their own West-Frisian dialect. When you look at the map where the Frisians were living, when the Zuiderzee (Southern sea) now IJsselmeer was not formed yet. it's correct to call the North-Holland part West-Friesland.
Btw I loved what you were doing. I think it's also stimulating for native English speakers to be aware Dutch, Frisian and German are not super difficult totally different languages to English, but the matter of fact are sibling languages and the most words they already know by sound and intonation. The same time I think it's one of the reasons so many Dutch speak English quite well. Thanks.
I could follow most of it because this might be a bit more standardized Frisian. But when I was in Friesland for a few months, it was much harder to comprehend. When they are among each other just chatting away in their own dialect, I'm totally lost.
Remember: the Frisians stayed independent from the Roman empire
Yep,regained it, this was in the same time when Jezus was doing his preaching, Id allmost say we practised what he preached - all roman tax collectors: hang up in the trees. Battle of Badhenna. Yet Jezus showed the anger and Frisians (Frissi) did not get angry - they got even. Im against violence, yet they wanted the Frisian women and then you are dead.
Not worth the effort of conquering, haha
@@Matthijsklaassen I think a swamp too far
@@torpidcloud there is Latin influence but not directly. Because dutch was influenced more by French and Latin over the years and Dutch has influence over Frisian.
Welkom! Bij je openingsshot dacht ik meteen: dat is geen Australië! En dan ben je terug en duik je niet in het Nederlands maar in het Fries, grappig. Fries heeft deels een heel andere uitspraak dan Nederlands. Alleen als je oud-Fries met oud-Engels vergelijkt zie je hun overeenkomst. Fries zit dan soms tussen Engels en Nederlands in, heeft sommige klankveranderingen samen met het Engels gedaan en is daarna pas sterk door het Nederlands beïnvloed. Church - tsjerke - kerk.
En bij woorden als kaai (key, sleutel in het Nederlands), of ko (cow) en kei (cows, in Old English this used to be kye), of tsiis (cheese, also pronounced as cheese, in Dutch this is called kaas)
Reading some other comments I think it must be the syntax that is similar to English BUT to understand the actual words at all you must need to be able to speak Dutch.
I don't speak any Dutch so does that sound about right ??
I know an okay amount of Old English and no Dutch, and written West Frisian often makes some sense to me, but it's almost completely incomprehensible when it's spoken. It's gone through a lot of the same sound changes that Dutch and the other continental West Germanic languages have, and has quite a few loanwords from it too, which has made the connection to English way less obvious.
The closeness to English is really only obvious with cherry-picked sentences, or if you compare Old Frisian to Old English. If you know OE, your brain will just autocorrect 95% of OF to that, hah.
What about West-Friesland?
In Hindeloopen (stad in Friesland) spreken ze een dialect dat nog meer op het Oud Engels lijkt dan het Fries dat nu grotendeels wordt gesproken, en dat dialect, 'hylpers', is voor een 'gewone' fries heel moeilijk te verstaan
The word you were looking for is “nijsgjirrich” (nieuwsgierig/geinteresseerd). In Danish, this is the same word: “nysgerrig”. And in German “neugierig”. It means to have a craving for news.
Welcome back btw 🎉
In this case it means "interessant / interesting"
Nijskjirrich = nieuwsgierig
@@Dzjudz Nope, it means curious
@@Meine.Postma Well it means both. At 7:04 she says "dat is hiel nijsgjirrich", which means "that is very interesting"; at 7:06 she says "foar minsken dy't der nijsgjirrich nei binne", meaning "for people who are interested/curious". It depends on the context.
@@Dzjudz Ok, agreed. Ik was de eerste vergeten.
Welcome home, Casey ! 😍🇳🇱 Welkom thuis, Casey ! 💥
So you went from autumn straight into spring?
Correct but this spring is not like an Australian spring I've been cold since we got here haahah 😅
@@caseykilmore Okay, my favorite Dutch saying: Het is pas koud als de ijsberen hout lopen te sprokkelen. I'm sure you'll figure this one out, ha ha!
I learn dutch.
But i speak hindi naively.
all three are indo-european but hindi being more conservative while i learning dutch i learned through English as more material is for dutch in english but on comapring with dutch its way more similar in base indo-european vocabulary and the pronunciation of g is hard for english speaker but at starting it was hard for me as i was making the gh sound continuously which is a aspirated g sound. but when i learned that its a fricative i started to add some space in the glotis ending it right.
but in frisian its not the case i found it easy for me as all the sound match with my dialect of hindi.
Great video and also great effort with your translation. I think you we're struggling with the word 'nijskearrig' (pronounced: neye-skj-ear-ichh) which means curious
'Bûter, brea en griene tsiis, wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries', is a very famous Frisian saying. There are examples on youtube how to pronounce it. The first part means 'Butter, bread and green cheese' and sound a lot more English than Dutch. Another interesting video is about an Old-English speaker who was talking to a Frisian (also on youtube, and I believe they were talking about a cow).
The cow video I saw after filming this and stumbling across other people that may have done a similar type of video. I'll have to hunt the first one down
@@caseykilmore It's an historical thing related to Grutte Pier. My grandmother is Frisian, so I understand everything but I don't speak it. (I do speak several other dialects). The dialect that I use the most is Gronings (but I live in Drenthe). Gronings is a lower saxon dialect with Frisian influences, and since I understand both it isn't that hard to understand old English.
Old English used a lot of case endings to nouns and verbs like Germanic languages do today before dropping a lot of it and simply adding prepositions and determiners.
I’m wondering if we kept the Old English style of speaking, or shifted to Anglish (the created form of Germanic English away from the Romance modification) if Frisian would be more comprehensible
As a Friesian born person living in Canada I understood most of what she said, but even I have to pay close attention. The word you really had trouble with is the Friesian word for Curious.
Welkom terug Casey! Zou je ditzelfde eens kunnen doen maar dan met limburgs? Ben benieuwd hoe goed je dat kan verstaan!
hmmmmm misschien een leuk film idee! Ik moet wat limburgs audio vinden waar ik kan op reageren maar ik zou het zeker aan de lijst zetten je bent niet de eerste persoon om dit te suggereren. Echt top!
Welkom terug!
Zolang een Fries langzaam praat kan iedereen die Nederlands spreekt ze wel verstaan, maar gooi er wat Beerenburg in en niemand verstaat ze nog.
geld dat niet voor ieder dialect/elke taal?
@@toqtoq3361 als drent met friese familie kan ik inderdaad bevestigen dat mensen die snel fries praten echt niet te volgen zijn. en ik heb al van jongs af aan mijn pake en beppe fries tegen mij horen praten, maar friezen die snel praten zijn niet te volgen.
Ek verstaan Afrikaans. Ek kan alles verstaan wat julle daar sê.
Oh dear 😓
I only speak English and I had not a clue what was being said. I recognised no words at all. Was hoping to maybe get a couple of words . I agree it must be closer to Dutch because you did far far better than I did by a 100%
The word in fries for cow is cow mv cows in fr kei. The key is also kei in fr. The frisian language has very much proverbs. When you are jobless it is called in fr op é dyk. to be on the dyke means one is looking for a job and there was in earlier days the only place to find a job, because all the land was very watery.
Hearing an Aussie switch from a perfect native English accent to a perfect native Dutch accent is fascinatingly weird.
Why so? I'm a native English speaker and yet can switch between English, Afrikaans and Zulu without an accent.
Let's say I can speak Afrikaans and Zulu over the phone to a native speaker of both those, and have them thinking I'm one of them. Nothing special about that either.
Nedersaksisch is also a language, spoken in the largest aria of the Netherlands, its west Germany and almost the entire region of East Netherlands
AFûk = Algemiene Fryske Ûnderrjocht Kommisje = General Frisian Education Committee. Nijskjirrich = litteraly translation = nosy. Other meaning in Frisian of nijskjirrich : interesting! Litteraly translation in Dutch of the word nieuwsgierig = news and "gierig" in the meaning of "to be eager for".
Nosy is not the right word, more like: curious!
in general its pretty easy to understand for most dutch people,unless the speak fast
Not closer than Danish (to old English)?
Hi Casey 😀. I'm Dutch by birth, but I've been Anglophone after. I'm fluent in Dutch, I have to believe, but when it comes to Fries I also have a problem... Despite me being supposedly Frisian.
Lovely thing though I wish to add is how friendly and inviting the music 🎶 in this lady's voice was though ☺️