Everything about Old Frisian totally explained
Old Frisian was the
West Germanic language spoken between the
8th and
16th centuries by the people who had settled in the area between the
Rhine and
Elbe on the European
North Sea coast in the
4th and
5th centuries. Their ancient homes were originally North
Germany and
Denmark. The language of the earlier inhabitants of the region (the
Frisians famously mentioned by
Tacitus) isn't attested. Old Frisian evolved into
Middle Frisian spoken from the 16th to the 19th century.
During the whole of the Middle Ages,
Fryslân stretched from the area around
Bruges, in what is now
Belgium, to the river
Weser, in northern
Germany. At that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern
North Sea coast. Today this region is sometimes referred to as Great Frisia or Frisia Magna, and many of the areas within it still treasure their Frisian heritage, even though in most places the Frisian languages have been lost.
The people from North Germany and Denmark who settled in
England from the 4th century onward, came from the same region and spoke the same language as the people who had settled in Fryslân. Therefore a close resemblance exists between Old Frisian and
Old English. This similarity was reinforced in the late
Middle Ages by the
Ingaevonic sound shift (
Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law), which affected Frisian and English, but affected
Old Saxon only slightly, and not at all any of the other
West Germanic varieties.
Phonology and grammar
Also, when followed by some vowels, the Germanic /k/ softened to a /tʃ/ sound; for example, the Frisian for
cheese and
church is
tsiis and
tsjerke, whereas in
Dutch it's
kaas and
kerk. One rhyme traditional to both England and Friesland demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "Bread, butter, and green cheese is good English and good Fries," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages (Frisian: "Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")
Old Frisian (c.1150-c.1550) retained
grammatical cases. Some of the texts that are preserved from this period are from the twelfth or thirteenth, but most are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Generally, all these texts are restricted to legalistic writings. Although the earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the
9th century, there are a few examples of
runic inscriptions from the region which are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language. These runic writings however usually don't amount to more than single- or few-word inscriptions.
Corpus
There are some early Frisian names preserved in Latin texts, and some
runic (
Futhorc) inscriptions, but the oldest surviving texts in Old Frisian date from the 13th century, in particular official and legal documents. They show a considerable degree of linguistic uniformity.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Old Frisian'.
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