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Old Frisian was the West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries by the people who had settled in the area between the Rhine and Elbe on the European North Sea coast in the 4th and 5th centuries. Their ancient homes were originally North Germany and Denmark. The language of the earlier inhabitants of the region (the Frisians famously mentioned by Tacitus) is not attested. Old Frisian evolved into Middle Frisian spoken from the 16th to the 19th century.

During the whole of the Middle Ages, Fryslân stretched from the area around Bruges, in what is now Belgium, to the river Weser, in northern Germany. At that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. Today this region is sometimes referred to as Great Frisia or Frisia Magna, and many of the areas within it still treasure their Frisian heritage, even though in most places the Frisian languages have been lost.

The people from North Germany and Denmark who settled in England from the 4th century onward, came from the same region and spoke the same language as the people who had settled in Fryslân. Therefore a close resemblance exists between Old Frisian and Old English. This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingaevonic sound shift (Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law), which affected Frisian and English, but affected Old Saxon only slightly, and not at all any of the other West Germanic varieties.

Phonology and grammar

When followed by some vowels the Germanic /k/ softened to a /tʃ/ sound; for example, the Frisian for cheese and church is tsiis and tsjerke, whereas in Dutch it is kaas and kerk. One rhyme traditional to both England and Friesland demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "Bread, butter, and green cheese is good English and good Fries," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages (Frisian: "Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")

Old Frisian (c.1150-c.1550) retained grammatical cases. Some of the texts that are preserved from this period are from the twelfth or thirteenth, but most are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Generally, all these texts are restricted to legalistic writings. Although the earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century, there are a few examples of runic inscriptions from the region which are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language. These runic writings however usually do not amount to more than single- or few-word inscriptions.

Corpus

There are some early Frisian names preserved in Latin texts, and some runic (Futhorc) inscriptions, but the oldest surviving texts in Old Frisian date from the 13th century, in particular official and legal documents. They show a considerable degree of linguistic uniformity.

• Westeremden yew-stick (ca. 750-900)
• Fon Alra Fresena Fridome [1]
• Hunsigo MSS H1, H2: Ten Commandements[2], 17 petitiones [3]
• Londriucht [4]
• Thet Freske Riim [5]
• Skeltana Riucht law code [6]

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• This page was last modified on 2 September 2008, at 13:50.

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