Ha goeie eltsenien! Hi everyone! Do you have any more questions about Afûk Frysk or in general about Frisian? Ask them here! Note: around 5:00 I mentioned a "father and brothers Halbertsma" - I should have said the three brothers Halbertsma, Joast, Eeltsje en Tsjalling, as the father was a baker and not involved in producing literary works.
@@FrisianWithHilbert Are the varieties of West Frisian generally closer to each other than in North Frisian? Because it is often said, that part of the reason we don't have one standard but rather ten is, that the dialects are just to different to standardize into one. Definitely not the only reason, but often mentioned as one.
@@MoLauer I would say we have an interesting situation where the mainland dialects are much closer than the North Frisian dialects. Having jsut prepared a video on Old Frisian and looked ahead to some Middle Frisian, it's interesting to note that this certainly was not always the case but there was some quite heavy dialect levelling in the nineteenth century. The exceptions in West Frisian are with the island variants, which are very conservative (the variant on Skiermûntseach even retains three grammatical genders) and the Hylpersk variant from Hylpen which are to the point of no longer being mutually intelligible with Mainland West Frisian. Note that none of these variants were included in the standard and they have their own orthographies. I think in terms of North Frisian it would (and has been for those who've tried) much more difficult to create a standard language than for the already levelled dialects of Mainland West Frisian (which conveniently left out the islands). Great question!
@@theChaosKe Good question! Because Frisian comes from a different branch of the West Germanic languages. Likely in the fifth century AD, newcomers from southern Scandinavia followed the coast to the west and occupied the (largely) empty coastline of north-western Germany and the Netherlands into Belgium. From there they crossed the channel and settled in eastern Britain, where they've been remembered to history as the Anglo-Saxons. There the language became known as Old English, while on the other side it would develop into the Frisian languages. These are the North Sea Germanic languages (often Ingvaeonic) which developed in southern Scandinavia then spread along the coast. Meanwhile, the common ancestor of Dutch was incubating between the Rhine and the Weser and is referred to often as Weser-Rhine West Germanic (or Istvaeonic). While they're related to the North Sea Germanic languages, they don't share in their sound changes, and have sound changes of their own, thus pulling the dialects further apart. Eventually, one of these Weser-Rhine dialects will "become" Frankish which was brought with the Franks into the modern-day Low Countries and would go on to develop into Old Dutch in the southern Netherlands.
@@MoLauer In my experience, most West Frisians who are active in the Frisian movement are of the opinion that the dialect differences are small, but if you listen and compare, for example, Súdwesthoeksk and Westereindersk, you can definitely notice the differences. I'm not going to take the islands and Hylpen into account, as the language developed differently there. I think that in West Frisia, the contact between the speakers helped to prevent the dialects from developing too far apart. In North Frisia, the respective regions did not have much contact with each other in the past, and when there was contact, Schleswig Low Saxon was often used as a mediating language. I find it quite interesting that if you compare the word "Frisian" in North Frisia, you have a lot of very different variants: frasch, friisk, fresk, freesch, fräisk, freesk. In West Frisian, you only have frysk on the mainland, and in East Frisia (in East Frisian Low Saxon) you only have fräisk - - which then also counts for Saterlandic Frisian.
Hilbert, you should be getting a grant of some kind from the Frisian council (or whoever) for videos like this, for promoting regional languages. The same goes for your promotion of Welsh, Irish etc. I only ask 12%, as your agent
It's something I might consider down the line to finance getting a good camera, tripod, lapel mic etc. to make some more professional teaching videos. But for now this is 100% a passion project! I love the linguistic diversity of the world and its minority languages and think it's so sad that so many are threatened with extinction. Hopefully, in some small way, I can do something about that.
@@FrisianWithHilbert I hope you do, because it's very impressive hearing Frisian , but even more impressive, as an Irishman, hearing you nail pronunciation of words as Gaeilge. Keep up your great work. Hopefully you'll get some of those sweet sweet Government Euros to aid your effort!
I suppose this may be a bit of an unorthodox suggestion, but I think one of the approaches that can be taken to combat declining use of minority languages in Europe (outside of funding programs and passing legislation, like what the council of Europe and other intergovernmental bodies may do) is to encourage the youth to tap into minority languages in their creative writing as a means to self expression. As haphazard as it may seem to include a phrase or two from one language in a work primarily constructed in another, I think T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland (which includes lines in German, French, and Romanized Classical Sanskrit)' is sort of a testament to the greater diversity of ideas that can be grasped at when a singular work includes lines in multiple languages.
We can all agree that Frisian needs to be talked about more. I know more than the average person (far from expert) on Germanic languages, yet I learned a lot from this video. Thank you Hilbert.
@@FrisianWithHilbert I am interested in it covering not just the history of the North Sea Germanics, but to possibly use it as a source to learn a decent bit of Frisian. I honestly already have learned the most about Frisian from your main channel (History with Hilbert), which is what got me interested in this channel in the first place. As I assume you have heard me talk about before on your other videos regarding the German, and Dutch folks in history, is my own family history. I have a drive to learn western germanic languages because of my families history regarding said peoples, and their languages. Short explanation; I am half Dutch having hundreds of family history from the Netherlands, my grandparents on my mother's side coming from South Holland after WW2. I am a quarter German having several hundred years of family history from Germany. My great great great great grandfather (Antonius Friesenhahn), having come from Germany, reportively being a founding father of the German colony in modern day Neu Braunfels, Texas. My great grandparents having Texas-German (Texasdeutsch) as their first language, speaking it until their deaths. In short summary, it is through family ancestry / history that I am interested in Dutch, German, Frisian, and a few extinct western germanic languages.
Translating that dictionary gave me some excellent insight into the scholars and their opinions during that time. The 1600s and 1800s did indeed have surges in interest, finally culminating in government involvement in a major dictionary project that sent people traveling across Friesland to listen to people and take notes. This plus the legacy of scholars was combined into the three-volume work. What I'm curious about is what happened to the complete old/middle/contemporary works from before the government involvement (they got donated), as well as the huge amount of notes and non-published prints that were generated during that time. Researching place names was interesting because spelling reforms renamed some of them.
Yeah - this video barely scratches the surface as you say, and it's certainly something I can and will go into much more detail about in future videos. On your point about what's lost, that's always the fever-dream/nightmare of the historical linguist and historian. Given the political uproar in Frisia directly adjacent to the end of the Old Frisian period (Frisian Civil War, Invasion of the Saxon Duke, the Reformation, the 80 Years War) - we know of quite a few monasteries that were plundered or burnt during one or even several of these times of uproar so that no doubt also entailed the destruction or at the very least dispersal and subsequent loss of material. For later material it's also a question of where it ended up - lots of things seem to get lost in a variety of ways so what we're left with is just what we're lucky enough to have - though more does keep showing up!
West Friesland is in North Holland and West Fries is spoken there. Strange that standard Fries is called West Fries. See wikipedia: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_Dutch
Quite confusing I agree! I explain why the nomenclature is the way that it is in this video on the Frisian languages: ruclips.net/video/jbBzVje_pIg/видео.htmlsi=t4-jRb3q-7ywKZlC
I really appreciate you making this video, so very interesting! I’d love to learn West Frisian. Any suggestions? Am a Welsh speaker, so can appreciate the struggle of minoritized languages and people, but also speak German and Dutch (the latter more or less) and of course see lots of similarities to Frisian.
Diolch yn fawr! Great that you're interested in learning West Frisian! I've got a video in the works called "How to learn West Frisian" - so hopefully I'll be able to provide some more concrete answers there. By way of self promotion I'll be starting to teach the language here on the channel as well. With your background in Dutch and German I think you're very well placed to learn :)
It's kind of sad that, even as a Frysian myself, I still learned so much from this video. Goes to show how poor Frisian education is. Most interesting thing was to learn about kood. I remember my mother sometimes saying it's "kood yn 'e wâlden" during winter, just thinking that kood was just a funny way to say kâld. Despite being a wâldpyk, I never knew that was an actual word. To thicken the plot, my mother was from Ljouwert and taught me all kinds of broken, Dutchified Frisian, so how she knew, I don't know
Yes it is, hopefully something that will change with the new Taalplan Frysk 2030. Yeah it's absolutely a form over in the Westereen and some surrounding towns like Twizel and Twizelerheide. Very recognisable too. Would she say: "kood yn 'e wâlden" or "kood yn 'e wooden"? Some speakers have this âld > ood in all positions. If she was from Ljouwert rather than the Wâlden it may be Stedsk influence. In short though, there's a lot of variation in Frisian than just Standerfrysk or Afûk Frysk which isn't wrong but rather just dialect variation. And that's great!
@@FrisianWithHilbert She'd say "kood yn 'e wooden." Mind you, she didn't normally replace 'âld' with 'ood', she'd usually say 'âld'. This must've just been a phrase she picked up somewhere. Thanks for all of your videos about the Frisian language and history, it's incredibly interesting!
Good video ❤ I'm trying to learn Old Frisian to connect more with my ancestry, as nearly all of my ancestors were Frisians. I’ve traced my lineage back to 1245 and discovered that I descend from many noble families like Jelckama, Wiarda, Heringa, Aytta, and others. I also did a DNA test at MyHeritage. Now, I’m not sure how reliable these tests are, but it showed that I have 98.2% Northwestern European ancestry, specifically from Friesland and the Frisian part of Groningen (which was Frisian back then), with 1.8% Scandinavian. This 1.8% is probably from the Viking Age. I've noticed that many Dutch people tend to have Scandinavian, Finnish, or English DNA, likely from the migration period, but what I’ve seen with other Frisians who have done DNA tests is that their results are almost 100% Northwestern European if they are true Frisians. While there may be a few percentages-usually less than 8%-that are not Northwestern European, they are typically Scandinavian. This aligns with the idea that this DNA comes from the Viking Age, contrasting with Dutch people who have a lot of immigration influences from various countries and Celtic heritage. It shows how Frisians tended to keep to themselves and stick with their own people. I would love to know if King Poppo had any descendants. It's likely he did, since he lived to adulthood, and people generally had children at a younger age back then. These descendants must have intermarried with other noble families. I’ve traced my lineage back to the early medieval period, which leaves around 400 to 500 years unaccounted for. Given the prominence of intermarriage among noble families during that time, I believe there’s a good chance that I, and others who descend from Frisian nobility, have King Redbad and other Frisian kings like Aldgisl in our lineage.
Thank you for watching! I'm just finishing up my video on Old Frisian where I'll be sharing some more suggestions for learning and hopefully sharing some fun facts about it you haven't come across before.
Yes, and it still is :) Some people in "Westfriesland" (North Holland) also still identify as Frisian too, although they no longer speak a Frisian language. In the Early Middle Ages the entire Dutch coastline was Frisian-speaking, but from the tenth century onwards the Low Franconian (Old Dutch) language gained ground in Zeeland, South Holland, and North Holland. However, the northern part of North Holland remained Frisian and rebellious against the Counts of Holland, even killing the Dutch Count Willem II who would otherwise have gone on to become Holy Roman Emperor. Likely as a result of the devastating St. Lucia's flood in 1287, which physically separated Westfriesland from Fryslân, the Dutch counts were able to wrest control of the area in 1297 and build a ring of fortifications to subdue the population. Quite a few interesting historical parallels with the Anglo-Normans in Wales about the same time. The Frisian language survived there for some centuries though, likely at least into the seventeenth century, and politically the Counts of Holland were of Holland and West-Frisia. Right up until 1840, the official name of the County was "County of Holland and Westfriesland." Eventually the Frisian language was replaced with Dutch, although through language shift, quite a few Frisian features entered the local dialect ("sk" instead of "sch") as well as several words (Wfris: beppe, hol mem vs Frysk: beppe, holle, mem vs NL: oma, hoofd, moeder) so in Dutch the dialect is referred to as "Westfries" (lit. West Frisian) while the Frisian language from Fryslân is called just "Fries" (lit. Frisian). This is rather confusing because in English usage we separate this branch of Frisian in Fryslân from the variants in East Frisia and North Frisia by calling it "West Frisian." To refer to the dialect of Dutch in the Westfriesland region of North Holland, English typically uses a label like "Hollandic West Frisian" or "West Frisian Dutch." Long story short (to use an idiom from Dutch) Westfries ≠ West Frisian. Hope that helps explain!
@@FrisianWithHilbert What a great response. Unalived a man called Willem? Interesting. I like that rebellious mindset. Might come in handy in the future. 👍
@@FrisianWithHilbert but the confusion is very annoying sometimes. Because when I tell people from the Netherlands that I am North Frisian, they ask: "Aah, so from Dokkum?" Funny, but also kinda sad how few people know about us. Thank you for this channel and your work of spreading the word :)
Sad to see that Standertfrysk is mostly just Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk with only a little bit from other dialects but I would love to see a video on Súdwesthoeksk, the smaller but very interesting dialects like Hylpersk, and Wâldfrysk (the dialect I am learning)!
It is tbh, although Súdwesthoeksk is spoken by c. 60,000 people as opposed to some 160,000 Wâldfrysk speakers and some 95,000 Klaaifrysk speakers. It's also the most consistently different mainland Frisian dialect so it would be harder to incorporate into a standard, though in my view the standard could allow variation with an official spelling of those Súdwesthoekske forms. I'll be making a video on Súdwesthoeksk in the near future :)
There's already a lot of information and videos on learning Dutch online while Frisian is underrepresented as a minority language, so for now I won't be teaching any Dutch :)
Hello, I'm just wondering how I could take it to the next steps in learning Frisian without actually living there. I know about the likes of Afûk or applications like Omrop Fryslân to listen in on Frisian media. However I was just wondering if there is anymore similar Websites/Companies that do work with keeping the language going. Thank you.
Thanks for watching and great question! You're already familiar with the official methods of learning like the Afûk, I would also recommend the app LearnFrisian which is free, and the website Taalportaal (Frysk) which has a lot of information on Frisian in English: taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topic/ I'll also be doing my best to teach some West Frisian on this channel as soon as I figure out the best format. So stay tuned!
It’s so sad with Frisian- thinking of what could’ve been in some alternate reality. I hear about revivals among minority languages all the time- but I’d be curious to see what that looks like in practice in Friesland. I think for minority languages to thrive- they need to be seen as a point of pride as well as “cool” especially among young speakers. What would you say the status of West Frisian is now; among younger frisians?
As a young Frisian, I'd say it depends. Some are proud of the language and speak it whenever they can. Others just don't care. Among my friend group, half only spoke Dutch at home, despite their parents being Frisian. They understand the language and, if they want to, can even speak it a bit, but they just don't care enough to actually learn it. And we live in a more rural part of the province. I'd imagine it's much worse in urban areas, Leeuwarden specifically
I agree, and hopefully that's something we can try to change in some way with this channel by showing how much appreciation and interest there is in the Frisian language worldwide. Great that you're thinking about strategies for the preservation of minority languages. Both of these factors are absolute pillars in their continued survival, and both need to change in the mentality of many Frisians after centuries of being told that their language wasn't worth learning and wasn't "polite" to speak.
Hi Hilbert, do you think that the rise of the internet and social media had/has a positive or negative effect on the usage if Frisian in the Netherlands? And do you see opportunities for a Frisian University in the future?
Not Hilbert, but as a Frisian, maybe I can answer. I think social media specifically, but also globalisation generally probably has a negative impact on any minority language. People easily connect with others from all over the place, who are less likely to speak my language, therefore I'm more inclined to drop my language in favour of the more commonly accepted and shared language. We're not in our own local bubble as much as we used to be. Whereas, 100 years ago, you might have been able to live perfectly fine without learning any other language besides your own mother tongue, that's no longer the case. Whether you even want to or not, you're exposed to other languages all the time. Even in Dutch, probably because of social media, more and more English words are used. Social media and how it connects people probably pulls everyone towards the most commonly spoken language and away from lesser spoken languages like Frisian, would be my guess
Frisians were certainly involved in the Dutch Empire and many Frisians settled in various parts of the world as a result. There weren't any significant clusters of Frisians to enable the survival of Frisian as a communal language in the Dutch Empire, though Frisian did become an important communal language in nineteenth-century Wisconsin. I've made a video about it on my History with Hilbert channel: ruclips.net/video/QAyTDnyyIAY/видео.html
It hat mei it (Westerlauwersk) Frysk te krijen dat West Frisian hjit yn it Ingelsk. Wat betizend wurket is dat wat yn it Nederlânsk Westfries hjit net itselde is as it Ingelske West Frisian dêr't it gauris West Frisian Dutch neamd wurdt. Mar yn'e takomst sil ik grif in fideo oer it Hollânske dialekt Westfries meitsje, dat hat in protte Fryske skaaimerken.
As a Groninger I'm really sad that my direct ancestor and friend of Gysbert Japix, Samuel van Haringhouk, was the first to put Gysberts poems in print. 😢
I'm named after Gysbert Japiks, and in his time people from Groningen still fully embraced the Frisian identity, even if they had stopped speaking the language.
@@FrisianWithHilbert As the Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel wrote in 1672 on our victory against Bommen Berend: "O Groningen, pilaar en hoofdstad van de Friezen - Van waar begint men best t' ontvouwen uwen lof? " 😀
![Diggy Graves - Red Vineyard [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8Ro085T0mnQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Ha goeie eltsenien! Hi everyone! Do you have any more questions about Afûk Frysk or in general about Frisian? Ask them here!
Note: around 5:00 I mentioned a "father and brothers Halbertsma" - I should have said the three brothers Halbertsma, Joast, Eeltsje en Tsjalling, as the father was a baker and not involved in producing literary works.
@@FrisianWithHilbert Are the varieties of West Frisian generally closer to each other than in North Frisian? Because it is often said, that part of the reason we don't have one standard but rather ten is, that the dialects are just to different to standardize into one. Definitely not the only reason, but often mentioned as one.
@@MoLauer I would say we have an interesting situation where the mainland dialects are much closer than the North Frisian dialects. Having jsut prepared a video on Old Frisian and looked ahead to some Middle Frisian, it's interesting to note that this certainly was not always the case but there was some quite heavy dialect levelling in the nineteenth century.
The exceptions in West Frisian are with the island variants, which are very conservative (the variant on Skiermûntseach even retains three grammatical genders) and the Hylpersk variant from Hylpen which are to the point of no longer being mutually intelligible with Mainland West Frisian. Note that none of these variants were included in the standard and they have their own orthographies.
I think in terms of North Frisian it would (and has been for those who've tried) much more difficult to create a standard language than for the already levelled dialects of Mainland West Frisian (which conveniently left out the islands).
Great question!
Why was there a dialectal continuum between dutch and german but not frisian? Why is it so different?
@@theChaosKe Good question! Because Frisian comes from a different branch of the West Germanic languages. Likely in the fifth century AD, newcomers from southern Scandinavia followed the coast to the west and occupied the (largely) empty coastline of north-western Germany and the Netherlands into Belgium. From there they crossed the channel and settled in eastern Britain, where they've been remembered to history as the Anglo-Saxons. There the language became known as Old English, while on the other side it would develop into the Frisian languages.
These are the North Sea Germanic languages (often Ingvaeonic) which developed in southern Scandinavia then spread along the coast. Meanwhile, the common ancestor of Dutch was incubating between the Rhine and the Weser and is referred to often as Weser-Rhine West Germanic (or Istvaeonic). While they're related to the North Sea Germanic languages, they don't share in their sound changes, and have sound changes of their own, thus pulling the dialects further apart. Eventually, one of these Weser-Rhine dialects will "become" Frankish which was brought with the Franks into the modern-day Low Countries and would go on to develop into Old Dutch in the southern Netherlands.
@@MoLauer In my experience, most West Frisians who are active in the Frisian movement are of the opinion that the dialect differences are small, but if you listen and compare, for example, Súdwesthoeksk and Westereindersk, you can definitely notice the differences. I'm not going to take the islands and Hylpen into account, as the language developed differently there. I think that in West Frisia, the contact between the speakers helped to prevent the dialects from developing too far apart. In North Frisia, the respective regions did not have much contact with each other in the past, and when there was contact, Schleswig Low Saxon was often used as a mediating language. I find it quite interesting that if you compare the word "Frisian" in North Frisia, you have a lot of very different variants: frasch, friisk, fresk, freesch, fräisk, freesk. In West Frisian, you only have frysk on the mainland, and in East Frisia (in East Frisian Low Saxon) you only have fräisk - - which then also counts for Saterlandic Frisian.
Hilbert, you should be getting a grant of some kind from the Frisian council (or whoever) for videos like this, for promoting regional languages. The same goes for your promotion of Welsh, Irish etc. I only ask 12%, as your agent
It's something I might consider down the line to finance getting a good camera, tripod, lapel mic etc. to make some more professional teaching videos. But for now this is 100% a passion project! I love the linguistic diversity of the world and its minority languages and think it's so sad that so many are threatened with extinction. Hopefully, in some small way, I can do something about that.
@@FrisianWithHilbert I hope you do, because it's very impressive hearing Frisian , but even more impressive, as an Irishman, hearing you nail pronunciation of words as Gaeilge. Keep up your great work. Hopefully you'll get some of those sweet sweet Government Euros to aid your effort!
I've always felt like there was a lack of content on frisian, so it's great to see this channel!
And great to have you here! If you know of anyone else interested feel free to share :)
I suppose this may be a bit of an unorthodox suggestion, but I think one of the approaches that can be taken to combat declining use of minority languages in Europe (outside of funding programs and passing legislation, like what the council of Europe and other intergovernmental bodies may do) is to encourage the youth to tap into minority languages in their creative writing as a means to self expression. As haphazard as it may seem to include a phrase or two from one language in a work primarily constructed in another, I think T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland (which includes lines in German, French, and Romanized Classical Sanskrit)' is sort of a testament to the greater diversity of ideas that can be grasped at when a singular work includes lines in multiple languages.
We can all agree that Frisian needs to be talked about more. I know more than the average person (far from expert) on Germanic languages, yet I learned a lot from this video. Thank you Hilbert.
Absolutely - fansels!
Glad you still learnt things from the video. What kind of things are you interested in the channel covering in future?
@@FrisianWithHilbert I am interested in it covering not just the history of the North Sea Germanics, but to possibly use it as a source to learn a decent bit of Frisian. I honestly already have learned the most about Frisian from your main channel (History with Hilbert), which is what got me interested in this channel in the first place.
As I assume you have heard me talk about before on your other videos regarding the German, and Dutch folks in history, is my own family history. I have a drive to learn western germanic languages because of my families history regarding said peoples, and their languages. Short explanation; I am half Dutch having hundreds of family history from the Netherlands, my grandparents on my mother's side coming from South Holland after WW2. I am a quarter German having several hundred years of family history from Germany. My great great great great grandfather (Antonius Friesenhahn), having come from Germany, reportively being a founding father of the German colony in modern day Neu Braunfels, Texas. My great grandparents having Texas-German (Texasdeutsch) as their first language, speaking it until their deaths.
In short summary, it is through family ancestry / history that I am interested in Dutch, German, Frisian, and a few extinct western germanic languages.
Thank you, Hilbert, very cool.
Thank you for watching!
Translating that dictionary gave me some excellent insight into the scholars and their opinions during that time. The 1600s and 1800s did indeed have surges in interest, finally culminating in government involvement in a major dictionary project that sent people traveling across Friesland to listen to people and take notes. This plus the legacy of scholars was combined into the three-volume work.
What I'm curious about is what happened to the complete old/middle/contemporary works from before the government involvement (they got donated), as well as the huge amount of notes and non-published prints that were generated during that time.
Researching place names was interesting because spelling reforms renamed some of them.
Yeah - this video barely scratches the surface as you say, and it's certainly something I can and will go into much more detail about in future videos.
On your point about what's lost, that's always the fever-dream/nightmare of the historical linguist and historian. Given the political uproar in Frisia directly adjacent to the end of the Old Frisian period (Frisian Civil War, Invasion of the Saxon Duke, the Reformation, the 80 Years War) - we know of quite a few monasteries that were plundered or burnt during one or even several of these times of uproar so that no doubt also entailed the destruction or at the very least dispersal and subsequent loss of material.
For later material it's also a question of where it ended up - lots of things seem to get lost in a variety of ways so what we're left with is just what we're lucky enough to have - though more does keep showing up!
West Friesland is in North Holland and West Fries is spoken there. Strange that standard Fries is called West Fries. See wikipedia: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_Dutch
Quite confusing I agree!
I explain why the nomenclature is the way that it is in this video on the Frisian languages:
ruclips.net/video/jbBzVje_pIg/видео.htmlsi=t4-jRb3q-7ywKZlC
I really appreciate you making this video, so very interesting! I’d love to learn West Frisian. Any suggestions? Am a Welsh speaker, so can appreciate the struggle of minoritized languages and people, but also speak German and Dutch (the latter more or less) and of course see lots of similarities to Frisian.
Diolch yn fawr! Great that you're interested in learning West Frisian! I've got a video in the works called "How to learn West Frisian" - so hopefully I'll be able to provide some more concrete answers there. By way of self promotion I'll be starting to teach the language here on the channel as well.
With your background in Dutch and German I think you're very well placed to learn :)
It's kind of sad that, even as a Frysian myself, I still learned so much from this video. Goes to show how poor Frisian education is.
Most interesting thing was to learn about kood. I remember my mother sometimes saying it's "kood yn 'e wâlden" during winter, just thinking that kood was just a funny way to say kâld. Despite being a wâldpyk, I never knew that was an actual word. To thicken the plot, my mother was from Ljouwert and taught me all kinds of broken, Dutchified Frisian, so how she knew, I don't know
Yes it is, hopefully something that will change with the new Taalplan Frysk 2030.
Yeah it's absolutely a form over in the Westereen and some surrounding towns like Twizel and Twizelerheide. Very recognisable too.
Would she say: "kood yn 'e wâlden" or "kood yn 'e wooden"?
Some speakers have this âld > ood in all positions.
If she was from Ljouwert rather than the Wâlden it may be Stedsk influence.
In short though, there's a lot of variation in Frisian than just Standerfrysk or Afûk Frysk which isn't wrong but rather just dialect variation. And that's great!
@@FrisianWithHilbert She'd say "kood yn 'e wooden." Mind you, she didn't normally replace 'âld' with 'ood', she'd usually say 'âld'. This must've just been a phrase she picked up somewhere.
Thanks for all of your videos about the Frisian language and history, it's incredibly interesting!
Good video man ❤
Thank you!
I have a whole life to live, but when im older, i'd consider learning standard frisian
I would absolutely recommend it! I'll be making some Frisian language lessons shortly so you can get a headstart ;)
Good video ❤
I'm trying to learn Old Frisian to connect more with my ancestry, as nearly all of my ancestors were Frisians. I’ve traced my lineage back to 1245 and discovered that I descend from many noble families like Jelckama, Wiarda, Heringa, Aytta, and others.
I also did a DNA test at MyHeritage. Now, I’m not sure how reliable these tests are, but it showed that I have 98.2% Northwestern European ancestry, specifically from Friesland and the Frisian part of Groningen (which was Frisian back then), with 1.8% Scandinavian. This 1.8% is probably from the Viking Age. I've noticed that many Dutch people tend to have Scandinavian, Finnish, or English DNA, likely from the migration period, but what I’ve seen with other Frisians who have done DNA tests is that their results are almost 100% Northwestern European if they are true Frisians. While there may be a few percentages-usually less than 8%-that are not Northwestern European, they are typically Scandinavian. This aligns with the idea that this DNA comes from the Viking Age, contrasting with Dutch people who have a lot of immigration influences from various countries and Celtic heritage. It shows how Frisians tended to keep to themselves and stick with their own people.
I would love to know if King Poppo had any descendants. It's likely he did, since he lived to adulthood, and people generally had children at a younger age back then. These descendants must have intermarried with other noble families. I’ve traced my lineage back to the early medieval period, which leaves around 400 to 500 years unaccounted for. Given the prominence of intermarriage among noble families during that time, I believe there’s a good chance that I, and others who descend from Frisian nobility, have King Redbad and other Frisian kings like Aldgisl in our lineage.
Thank you for watching!
I'm just finishing up my video on Old Frisian where I'll be sharing some more suggestions for learning and hopefully sharing some fun facts about it you haven't come across before.
Hilbert, wasn't the northern part of North Holland called West-Friesland?
Yes, and it still is :)
Some people in "Westfriesland" (North Holland) also still identify as Frisian too, although they no longer speak a Frisian language. In the Early Middle Ages the entire Dutch coastline was Frisian-speaking, but from the tenth century onwards the Low Franconian (Old Dutch) language gained ground in Zeeland, South Holland, and North Holland. However, the northern part of North Holland remained Frisian and rebellious against the Counts of Holland, even killing the Dutch Count Willem II who would otherwise have gone on to become Holy Roman Emperor. Likely as a result of the devastating St. Lucia's flood in 1287, which physically separated Westfriesland from Fryslân, the Dutch counts were able to wrest control of the area in 1297 and build a ring of fortifications to subdue the population. Quite a few interesting historical parallels with the Anglo-Normans in Wales about the same time.
The Frisian language survived there for some centuries though, likely at least into the seventeenth century, and politically the Counts of Holland were of Holland and West-Frisia. Right up until 1840, the official name of the County was "County of Holland and Westfriesland." Eventually the Frisian language was replaced with Dutch, although through language shift, quite a few Frisian features entered the local dialect ("sk" instead of "sch") as well as several words (Wfris: beppe, hol mem vs Frysk: beppe, holle, mem vs NL: oma, hoofd, moeder) so in Dutch the dialect is referred to as "Westfries" (lit. West Frisian) while the Frisian language from Fryslân is called just "Fries" (lit. Frisian). This is rather confusing because in English usage we separate this branch of Frisian in Fryslân from the variants in East Frisia and North Frisia by calling it "West Frisian." To refer to the dialect of Dutch in the Westfriesland region of North Holland, English typically uses a label like "Hollandic West Frisian" or "West Frisian Dutch."
Long story short (to use an idiom from Dutch) Westfries ≠ West Frisian.
Hope that helps explain!
@@FrisianWithHilbert What a great response. Unalived a man called Willem? Interesting.
I like that rebellious mindset. Might come in handy in the future. 👍
@@FrisianWithHilbert but the confusion is very annoying sometimes. Because when I tell people from the Netherlands that I am North Frisian, they ask: "Aah, so from Dokkum?" Funny, but also kinda sad how few people know about us. Thank you for this channel and your work of spreading the word :)
@@DT-wp4hk Thank you! Yes, I believe the command was given to "fire at Will" and well... the rest is history ;)
@@MoLauer I can imagine! Hopefully we can make a difference and help raise some geographic awareness of Frisia at the very least xD
Sad to see that Standertfrysk is mostly just Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk with only a little bit from other dialects but I would love to see a video on Súdwesthoeksk, the smaller but very interesting dialects like Hylpersk, and Wâldfrysk (the dialect I am learning)!
It is tbh, although Súdwesthoeksk is spoken by c. 60,000 people as opposed to some 160,000 Wâldfrysk speakers and some 95,000 Klaaifrysk speakers. It's also the most consistently different mainland Frisian dialect so it would be harder to incorporate into a standard, though in my view the standard could allow variation with an official spelling of those Súdwesthoekske forms.
I'll be making a video on Súdwesthoeksk in the near future :)
are we gonna get a dutch with hilbert too?
There's already a lot of information and videos on learning Dutch online while Frisian is underrepresented as a minority language, so for now I won't be teaching any Dutch :)
We want Grunnings with Hilbert!
@@Niek.BroekemaNeddersassisk met Hilbert, bc we are way larger of a language then you think!
@@Niek.Broekema I will actually be covering Grunnings in a video!
@@sheeple04 Will also be looking at Low German and hopefully having some native speakers on in the future.
Hello, I'm just wondering how I could take it to the next steps in learning Frisian without actually living there. I know about the likes of Afûk or applications like Omrop Fryslân to listen in on Frisian media. However I was just wondering if there is anymore similar Websites/Companies that do work with keeping the language going. Thank you.
Thanks for watching and great question!
You're already familiar with the official methods of learning like the Afûk, I would also recommend the app LearnFrisian which is free, and the website Taalportaal (Frysk) which has a lot of information on Frisian in English:
taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topic/
I'll also be doing my best to teach some West Frisian on this channel as soon as I figure out the best format. So stay tuned!
@@FrisianWithHilbert Thank you. ❤❤👍🏻
Just how large are these areas containing the dialects contending for standard usage?
It’s so sad with Frisian- thinking of what could’ve been in some alternate reality. I hear about revivals among minority languages all the time- but I’d be curious to see what that looks like in practice in Friesland.
I think for minority languages to thrive- they need to be seen as a point of pride as well as “cool” especially among young speakers.
What would you say the status of West Frisian is now; among younger frisians?
As a young Frisian, I'd say it depends. Some are proud of the language and speak it whenever they can. Others just don't care. Among my friend group, half only spoke Dutch at home, despite their parents being Frisian. They understand the language and, if they want to, can even speak it a bit, but they just don't care enough to actually learn it. And we live in a more rural part of the province. I'd imagine it's much worse in urban areas, Leeuwarden specifically
I agree, and hopefully that's something we can try to change in some way with this channel by showing how much appreciation and interest there is in the Frisian language worldwide.
Great that you're thinking about strategies for the preservation of minority languages. Both of these factors are absolute pillars in their continued survival, and both need to change in the mentality of many Frisians after centuries of being told that their language wasn't worth learning and wasn't "polite" to speak.
Hi Hilbert, do you think that the rise of the internet and social media had/has a positive or negative effect on the usage if Frisian in the Netherlands? And do you see opportunities for a Frisian University in the future?
Not Hilbert, but as a Frisian, maybe I can answer. I think social media specifically, but also globalisation generally probably has a negative impact on any minority language. People easily connect with others from all over the place, who are less likely to speak my language, therefore I'm more inclined to drop my language in favour of the more commonly accepted and shared language. We're not in our own local bubble as much as we used to be. Whereas, 100 years ago, you might have been able to live perfectly fine without learning any other language besides your own mother tongue, that's no longer the case. Whether you even want to or not, you're exposed to other languages all the time. Even in Dutch, probably because of social media, more and more English words are used. Social media and how it connects people probably pulls everyone towards the most commonly spoken language and away from lesser spoken languages like Frisian, would be my guess
Did any descendants of the area go to Africa in the 1700 1800 hundreds. Is some of the language used in South Africa.
Frisians were certainly involved in the Dutch Empire and many Frisians settled in various parts of the world as a result. There weren't any significant clusters of Frisians to enable the survival of Frisian as a communal language in the Dutch Empire, though Frisian did become an important communal language in nineteenth-century Wisconsin. I've made a video about it on my History with Hilbert channel:
ruclips.net/video/QAyTDnyyIAY/видео.html
Ik dacht dat dit filmpje oer Westfries ging, mar dat is helegaer net sa, denk?
It hat mei it (Westerlauwersk) Frysk te krijen dat West Frisian hjit yn it Ingelsk. Wat betizend wurket is dat wat yn it Nederlânsk Westfries hjit net itselde is as it Ingelske West Frisian dêr't it gauris West Frisian Dutch neamd wurdt.
Mar yn'e takomst sil ik grif in fideo oer it Hollânske dialekt Westfries meitsje, dat hat in protte Fryske skaaimerken.
And to confuse the non-natives: (West) Frisian is NOT spoken in West-Friesland.
🇳🇱
Father and two sons? The Halbertsma's were three of four brothers from Grou. Joast, Eeltsje en Tsjalling. The father was a baker.
Good point, not sure how I slipped up there. I'll add a correction note.
@@FrisianWithHilbert Bêst genôch!
As a Groninger I'm really sad that my direct ancestor and friend of Gysbert Japix, Samuel van Haringhouk, was the first to put Gysberts poems in print. 😢
I'm named after Gysbert Japiks, and in his time people from Groningen still fully embraced the Frisian identity, even if they had stopped speaking the language.
@@FrisianWithHilbert As the Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel wrote in 1672 on our victory against Bommen Berend: "O Groningen, pilaar en hoofdstad van de Friezen - Van waar begint men best t' ontvouwen uwen lof? " 😀
@@FrisianWithHilbert Gysbert became Hilbert?
@@Niek.Broekema No it's one of my middle names :)
@@FrisianWithHilbert ah! My name comes from the (Frisian 🫣) Trijntje (/Nienke)😀
Something is wrong with the Discord link.
Thanks for letting me know, I'll try and get that fixed.
Fryslân boppe, en de rest yn’e groppe
Mooie video!
Sa mar krekt! Tankewol!