West Frisian Frysk, pronounced [ˈfriːs(k)]; Dutch: Fries [ˈfriːs]) is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages. In the 2001 census, there were 471.000 speakers of West Frisian.

Linguistics

As a Germanic language, Frisian is closely related to other Germanic languages such as English, Scots, Swedish and Gothic. Furthermore, as the Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, Frisian is also related to languages as dissimilar as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

Classification

West Frisians's full classification is as follows:

Indo-European (Proto-Indo-European) > Germanic (Proto-Germanic) > West Germanic > Ingvaeonic > Anglo-Frisian > Frisian > West Frisian

Phonology and Phonotactics

Standard West Frisian has 19 vowel phonemes. These consist of 9 pairs of vowels, contrasting for length, as well as the schwa. The eight vowels are /i y u ɪ ø o ɛ ɔ a/, with the long vowel corresponding to /ɪ/ being /eː/, while the others just are lengthened. /yː/ is fairly rare and, in one dialect, it and /uː/ are both completely absent. Likewise, while they are patterned after monophthongs, several of the long vowels are actually realized as diphthongs.

There are 16 diphthongs in West Frisian, with several other possible ones more often being classified as glide+vowel sounds as opposed to a diphthong.

There are 18 consonant phonemes, and syllabic sonorants can appear in specific instances. The sequences /nj, tj, sj, zj/ coalesce to [ɲ, tɕ, ɕ, ʑ]. There are several other rules involved as well, such as voicing assimilation, final devoicing, as well as syllabification rules. Stress on native Frisian words is on the first vowel.

Morphology and Syntax

Frisian has a strict V2 word order. The main verb always appears as the second element (not necessarily word) in the sentence. If there is an auxiliary verb, only the verb that inflects for person and tense, the finite verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_verb), is in the second position, while the infinite one goes to the end of the clause. Contrast: ik sjoch har ("I saw her") with ik ha har sjoen ("I have seen her").

Frisian nouns decline solely for plurality, though there are a few isolated holdovers of the case system. Gender does exist, though it is marked on the article instead of the noun. The remains of a genitive case do still exist, but its usage is mainly literary, and a periphrasic manner using a prepositional phrase is preferred.

The basic structure for a Frisian noun phrase is (Determiner) - (Adverb) - (Adjective) - Noun, with adverbs only being present to modify adjectives; more than one adjective can be used to modify a noun. While Frisian once had three genders -- neuter, masculine and feminine -- there are now only two genders in the language: neuter and common. The neuter is the remains of the old neuter, while the masculine and feminine have collapsed into the common gender. The words are distinguished by the article they take, it for neuter and de for common, and there is no clearcut relationship to natural gender; for example, the words for wife/woman, girl, and boy are all neuter.

Frisian nouns only mark for plurality, and do not have a dual form. If the noun has a regular plural, it is accomplished with either the suffixation of -en or -s to the underlying form of the noun. Polysyllabic nouns ending with -ing can take either of the two forms; the choice is often dependent upon dialect, and both are accepted int he standard form.

Frisian adjectives, when used attributively, are inflected to agree with the number and gender of the noun. For common nouns, -e is added as a suffix to the noun, whereas neuter nouns do not have a specific suffix. Unlike in languages such as Spanish, the adjective does not agree with the subject when it is used predicatively. The addition of a determiner can complicate this system, by causing inflection of the adjective of a neuter noun when it follows it, dit, dat.

Frisian has nine pronouns, split across two cases: subject and object. There is a formal and informal second person singular pronoun. The formal one is used automatically when talking to strangers, 'as well as with anyone with whom one is not intimate or who is older and/or demands a certain measure of respect.' It is always used with plural verbs. It is not used, however, with parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. who are addressed by their title and the third person.
These can be seen in the table below

Gloss | Subject | Object --- | --- 1sg. | ik | my 2sg.fam. | do | dy 2sg.form | jo | jo 3.sg.M | hy | him 3.sg.F | sy | har 3.sg.N | it | it 1.pl | wy | ús 2.pl | jimme | jimme 3.pl | sy | harren

Neither natural gender nor grammatical gender is strictly adhered to in the choice of third person pronouns. In reference to people, hy or sy/hja is used, depending on the sex of the person, even when that person is referred to with a neuter noun: it famke hat har tas ûnder, 'the girl has her purse under the (her) arm.* Here 'girl' is referred to as 'her', even though it is a neuter noun. Animals of both sexes are generally referred to as hy. Only the verb form distinguishes the feminine singular for the third person plural pronoun; both also have the form hja, which is archaic and thus was not added to the table.

Frisian verbs were traditionally divided into two main classes, weak and strong, based on whether they were regular or irregular, respectively. The weak classes is further divided into two other ones, Class I and Class II, depending on the ending of the infinitive. Class I weak verbs are completely irregular, and all forms can be derived from the same paradigm. Class II verbs is the 'default' verb form; when new verbs are formed in Frisian, they are of Class II.

Only two tenses are marked on the verb in Frisian: the present and the preterite (or simple past). All other tenses, both active and passive, are formed with one of four auxiliary verbs: wêze, hawwe, wurde and sille. Apart from the present and preterite mentioned above, the other active forms are the present perfect, formed with hawwe and the past participle; the past perfect, formed with the preterite of hawwe and the past participle; the future, formed by the verb sille and the infinitive; the future perfect, formed with the conjugated verb sille plus the past participle of the verb and the helping verb hawwe; the conditional, made up of the past tense of sille plus the infinitive; the perfect conditional, constructed of the preterite of sille plus the past participle of the verb and then hawwe. The first person singular form of these all can be seen in the table below;

Form	Frisian	English
infinitive (class 1)	meane	mow
present	ik mean	I mow
preterite	ik meande	I mowed
present perfect	ik ha meand	I have mowed
past perfect	ik hie meand	i had mowed
future	ik sil meane	I will mow
Future perfect	ik sil meand hawwe	I will have mowed
Conditional	ik soe meane	I would mow
Perfect conditional	ik soe meand hawwe	I will have mowed

All of these also have a passive form, formed with the auxilary verbs wêre, wurde. The passive is used less often than in English, however, with the impersonal construction being preferred.

Frisian tenses are used slightly differently than their English counterparts. For instance, all of them can be translated as a progressive as well; to emphasize the action, and adverb must be added. The present tense can be used for the future tense with a temporal adverb, with the future form that uses sille taking a more emphatic connotation. The past perfect can be used to express certain types of counterfactual statements, such as Jelle hie soks noait dien, "Jelle would never have done something like that" (when can be expressed with the past conditional, as well). A few verbs, which involve motion or change of state, sometimes use the complex tenses with wêze instead of hawwe. This can be seen in older English (as well as Dutch and German), 'I am come' instead of 'I have come', or 'He is risen' instead of 'He has risen'. In Frisian, however, wêze itself can take the helping verb, hawwe: ik hie west, 'I had been'

Miscellany

Frisian is often considered to be the closest non-British relation of English.
This can be seen in the sentence, "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk" or 'Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Frisian'
According to legend, the 16th century Frisian freedom fighter Pier Gerlofs Donia used a similar rhyme, 'Bûter, brea en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries' as a shibboleth that he forced captives to repeat in order to distinguish Frisians from the Dutch and Germans.

Samples

Spoken sample:

The Jesus Film

Bible Reading

More found at the Endangered Languages Archive

Written sample:

Berne en opgroeid yn Ynje, sil dêr syn grêf wêze. Syn Heitelaân, Ien grutte emoasje út syn libben stiet him klear foar eagen. It frjemde lân, it lân fan Heit, en noch ien, dat fan Mem. Fan Heit: Fryslân, fan Mem: Noarwegen. Tsien jier wie er, Heit gie mei ferlof, en beide lannen hat er sjoen. Frslân yn maitiidspracht, wyst de sinne skynde oer de marren en de wide greiden mei fee. Noarwegen, doe't de hege sinne dreamde yn 'e fjorden. Hoe djip is dat alles net fêst set en syn siel. Heite en Memme lân. Mar sines? Hy hat der nea weron west.

Sources

A grammar of Yakkha, Diana Schackow, available for free download

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