Frisian language

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One of two two most-north provences of the Netherlands is called Friesland (in Dutch) or Frysl^a (in Frisian). The provence has about 700,000 inhabitants of which about 50 percent speak Frisian on a daily basis. Mostly in the villages it is the primairy language for most people, so daily conversations are conducted in Frisian. Upto twenty-five years ago even the primairy schools conducted their lessons in Frisian, leaving only about two hours for the Dutch language weekly. Pupils came to school speaking mainly Frisian and learned the Dutch language for writing and reading. Because of this only about 10 percent of the people who speak Frisian can also write it. About 40 percent can read it handsomely.

Frisian is a very old language and was used as one of the many basises for putting together the official Dutch language (around 1800). The mean influance was however  'Hollands' , which is spoken in Amsterdam, Haarlem and the west provences. So syntaxis was taken from 'Hollands'  so Frisian and Dutch now differ on some points in syntaxis. One example:
Dutch: 'Ik zal het laten zien'
Frisian: 'Ik sil ut sjoen litte'  (last two words in different order)

Because of it's origin Frisian is closely related to English, Danish and Swedish. In the time of the Frisian kingdom (around the year 800) Frisians held an empire from south of the current city of Dordrecht upto the south of Denmark. The coastline and about a hundred kilometers inland were part of this kingdom. This is the reason why old people in the south-west of Denmark still speak a Frisian variaty. Also in the north of Germany, both close to the Danish border and in the area known as Ost-Friesland Frisian is spoken. The anthem ('volklied') is still remarkably the same as sung in Friesland itself, only some words have changed. This leaves most Frisian speechless when they come to Denmark for the first time and discover they can read about 40..60 percent of the texts of signs, papers and other writings. Only the prenounciation has devellopped in another direction. But after adoption of a few rules of speech, Danish is not hard to learn for a Frisian.

When the Saks invaded England they brought their language to this island, taking with them many traces of the Frisian language. Like French still has it traces in the English language, so has Frisian. Some words are virtually the same (and very different from Dutch), some are alike.