How similar is English and Frisian

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[fervanhier]

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 <3! Love your channel, tút út Fryslân!

[SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

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 :)

[tamasmarcuis]

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.

[BaartFilmProductions]

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.

[ammelovmokum]

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.

[teaser]

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!

[stephandevos]

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.

[DoowopLover]

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.

[tinfoilhomer]

A heart-felt thankyou for this video, from an Aussie.

[Anneke-benik]

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.

[IcompilationTV]

Seeing Piet Paulusma pop up at around 2:00 made me tear up a little not gonna lie. RIP ❤️

[dutchman]

My family is from North Belgium, my grandparents spoke it. I speak it, but I understand it better. Good video!

[BrianWinters-cx]

I have several degrees and can understand middle english 1300s if read slowly. I can sometimes read old English

[matthijsbouma]

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!

[joriskbos]

Wow, I don't know any Frisian, but I found it quite easy to understand this lady

[rutgerdemuelenaere]

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 :)

[AriodanteITA]

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

[bentandre]

my kids were born in friesland, heerenveen. the workers in that hospital were awesome.

[femke]

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😄

[bouk]

In the Netherlands, Westfries means the head of North Holland.