Frisian languages

Frisian (Frysk) or ("Frasch") is a language (as well as a group of often mutually unintelligible dialect of said language) spoken by a small ethnic group living in the northerwestern part of Europe.

Most Frisian speakers live in the Netherlands, primarily in the province of Friesland (Fryslân in Frisian). There are about 440,000 speakers there, and about 10,000 more in the Saterland and the Schleswig-Holstein Waddensee area of Germany (the latter area known as Nordfriesland or Northern Frisia). Frisian is highly similar to Old English, and is scientifically classified as the closest language on earth to English. However, since such classifications, where possible, are based on studies of the earliest written forms of languages, they, in the case of Frisian and English, do not take into account the centuries of drift of English away from Frisian norms.

Today, the language most easily classed as similar to Frisian are Dutch/Flemish and Low Saxon/Low German, with Frisian having been itself been brought progressively closer to Dutch as a consequence of the Political subordinaltion of Fryslan to the ethnic Dutch. The language as it was spoken in Northern Holland (formerly "West Friesland") is now completely extinct, while a dialiect of Dutch known as Stadtfries 'City Friesian' has made massive gains within Fryslan province itself. Elsewhere in the former area of Frisian, Low Saxon/ Low german has come to predominate, with dialects of the Saxon language now know generically as "Frisian".

The earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century AD. A few examples of Runic inscriptions from the region are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language. There runic writings however usually do not amount to more than single or few-word inscriptions, and cannot be said to consititute 'literature' as such. Actual frisian writings appear a few centuries later, and are generally restricted to legalistic writings - this the "Old Frisian" period.