Talk:Frisian languages

Topic

The page now has: This page covers the West Frisian language, spoken in the Netherlands. For other Frisian languages see Frisian language (disambiguation). It continues with a treatment of the super language, with only occasional reference to West-Frisian. Something is not quite right there. Aliter 17:50, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Saxon dialect?

Is Frisian a Saxon dialect? It is grouped with English, which is Saxon. --Vitzque (talk) 19:13, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, mate, despite having an ancestry of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, and later French, English is not Saxon - time has moved on. 98.67.191.44 (talk) 03:51, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

No. There are three related, but different, things called "Saxon".

• "Anglo-Saxon" refers to the tribes that left Frisia 1600 years ago to conquer Britain. The people who stayed behind in Frisia are the Frisians. Their languages were mutually intelligible, but after all these centuries, they've diverged into English and Frisian, which are more closely related to each other than to the other Germanic languages, but separate languages.

• "Saxon language(s)" is another name for the West Low German family, which came from the area east of Frisia, centered around the modern state of Lower Saxony. These languages are more closely related to Dutch than to Anglo-Frisian.

• "Saxon dialect(s)" refers to the dialects of Upper Saxony, an area all the way on the other side of Germany centered around the modern states of Saxony and Thuringia. These are East Central dialects of High German, much closer to standard German than to Low German, Dutch, or Anglo-Frisian.

So, neither Anglo-Saxon nor Old Frisian, nor modern English nor modern Frisian, are Saxon languages, or Saxon dialects. But, just to make things more fun, there is a language called East Frisian that is not Frisian but Saxon. --157.131.246.136 (talk) 08:05, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Scandinavian references

This article needs to be cleared of Scandinavian references. If you look at the language samples, there is no similarity at all in any way, but similarity between the others in in most cases evident. Will wait for any objections to be voiced on the issue. SNTOI (talk) 12:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

@SNTOI: You've commented in a section that is a decade old. I've set up archiving on this page so the old sections should be moved to archives but this one will not be because of a recent comment. New comments go after older ones not above. New comments are WP:INDENTed based on what they are responding to but perhaps yours is not a response to anything in particular in this section. I disagree with your removal of WikiProject Denmark from this talk page because there are Frisian islands in Denmark. Your edits to the article were messy and in two cases created bad grammar. The way to leave notes is with <ref> and not with an asterisk. I removed Swedish and Norwegian because they are irrelevant to this article. Danish is relevant only because Frisian is spoken in Denmark. —DIYeditor (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any similarity in the languages comparing all the elements. I'm not sure what the purpose is for drawing a similarity, except confusion. The language doesn't really say anything other than it being most similar to German. Germanic tribes from the North are known to have ravaged and settled onto the coasts and even to central europe very early. Apart from that this coastal line was taken over and invaded multiple times by frankish types and later germans possibly moved there since the language has changed mostly to a german style as the lines show. Frisian islands to me mean nothing more than some Frisians were allowed to settle on them and didn't adopt the Danish language. That could be as late as the 19-20th century. Much like the Germans from the south moved up to Schleswig further north like the Ottomans in Greek lands and kept their language. I think an asterisk with warning is fine after the sentence, since most people are too inept at looking at the actual words and comparison. Even if the language is what it is now (ie mostly german sounding), that does not say it wasn't very different earlier in prior centuries and not so much German. Maybe it was earlier much more different and it has been overwritten with something more German. In that case that would have to be an expansion to the article and would help deal with these central authorities imposing their language on natives. SNTOI (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@SNTOI: Well, the article has been cleaned of the statements that said Frisian has been influenced by or is closely related to Danish so I don't think we are implying that there is a direct connection. The reader is free to draw their own conclusions about whether Danish is being compared or contrasted when the sample is given - I would think they would just as well assume it is a contrast. It is not in keeping with common Wikipedia style to put an asterisk note at the end of a line, it should be given as a footnote with the {{efn}} (explanatory footnote) template with a {{notelist}} in a Notes section added below. Also it is WP:OR (original research) to make a statement that Frisian is or isn't related to Danish, that requires a source. So I think we could either delete the line of Danish entirely or add a sourced footnote that Frisian is not closely related to Danish and that the sample is offered only because of geographic proximity. I think I would prefer the latter, personally. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:27, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

The 2005 code for Eastern Frisian

Hi, I am a known troll. At least, that's what I just read in the comment from the person reverting my edit from the right 2005 code for Eastern Frisian, frs, back to the wrong code, stq.

I am also the person who in 2004/2005 documented and requested the ISO 639-2 code change for Western Frisian, Northern Frisian, and Eastern Frisian. This change was documented in the document now at [1], which our pages currently refers to as note 10. The decision even included my conclusion that the code fry had effectively been in use as a code for Western Frisian only, a comment that in turn was included in our page.

You can find the resulting change described at Frisian_languages#Status. After the first sentence, which I'll mention below, it continues about the change to the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 codes. This change is covered on our page since 14 March 2006. This includes the unfortunate wording "The new ISO 639 code frs is used for the Saterland Frisian language also known as Eastern Frisian", which is not the complete truth. Saterland Frisian is the last still spoken dialect of Eastern Frisian. However, documents in other dialects exist as well, hence the two can not be used interchangeably. The ISO 639-2 code frs is for the entire Eastern Frisian language. Therefore, the ISO 639-2 change we're discussing on the page did indeed assign frs to Saterland Frisian, but not exclusively to that dialect. It's also a weakness to write "ISO 639", rather than "ISO 639-2", as is the tense used, but in the context these should not cause problems.

On 23 November 2007, that description was changed to say, according to the comment, that "stq is now used for Saterland Frisian". The change mostly adds information about the 2005 change, and documents it with a document now at [2]. The editor must therefore have seen in that very document that the code as given for Eastern Frisian is frs. Yet, the main part is apparently to claim that the code change assigned stq to Saterland Frisian language/Eastern Frisian.

The claim itself has some validity, caused by the curious management of ISO 639, where different tables are managed by different authorities. Thus, the ISO 639-3 codes, not managed by the same people as the ISO 639-2 codes, now includes a code stq for Saterland Frisian: [3]. This appears to be based on an error in Ethnologue, but however this will get resolved, such a code currently indeed exists. Anyone with the time and the inclination to research this, could probably add a paragraph about the assignment of this code. It is, however, an ISO 639-3 code; it was not assigned as the new ISO 639-2 in the change we describe in the article. Until someone reworks the article, the code for (Saterland Frisian language/)Eastern Frisian that we describe, is the code from the ISO 639-2 change we describe: frs.

I have no idea why someone lied about that while inserting a source that shows him wrong. But then, I am a known troll. Mysha (talk)

Warming up old discussions is classic trolling. You should have been banned long time ago. --PiefPafPier (talk) 19:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Frisian in Germany

We have: "Saterland and North Frisian[9] are officially recognised and protected as minority languages in Germany". I assume this is true. However, it might be worth noting that the Friesisch-Gesetz given as source doesn't name the languages other than as "die in Schleswig-Holstein gesprochenen friesischen Sprachformen". That also means it doesn't refer to Saterland Frisian, which is spoken in Lower Saxony. Mysha (talk)