On the Boundaries of Phonology and Phonetics
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5.2.The relationship between Frisian and the other Germanic languagesFrom Table 3 and 4 it is possible to determine the distance between all Germanic standard languages. We are especially interested in the position of Frisian within the Germanic language group. For this purpose the mean distance over the 6 Frisian dialects (excluding the dialect of Leeuwarden which is considered Dutch) has been added. This makes it possible to treat Frisian as one language. Examining the column which shows the ranking with respect to Frisian, we find that Dutch is most similar to Frisian (a mean distance of 38.7%). Clearly the intensive contact with Dutch during history has had a great impact on the distance between the two languages. Moreover, German appears to be closer to Frisian than any other language outside the Netherlands. Looking at the ranking with respect to Dutch, it appears that Town Frisian is most similar (Leeuwarden 20.3%), followed by the Frisian varieties (average of 38.7%). Next, German is most similar, due to common historical roots and continuous contact (a distance of 53.3%). As discussed in the introduction, Friesland has a long history of language contact with the Scandinavian countries, and traces of Scandinavian influences can be found in the Frisian language. The impact of this contact is reflected in our results only to a limited extent. Remarkably, the distances to the mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) are smaller (between 60.7% and 63.3%) than to English (65.3%) even though the Frisian language is genetically closer related to English than to Scandinavian (see Section 2.1). Table 3. Ranked Levenshtein distances in percentages between each of the five West Germanic languages and the other language varieties in the investigation.
Table 4. Ranked Levenshtein distances in percentages between each of the five North Germanic languages and the other language varieties in the investigation.
So, when looking at the results from a Frisian perspective, the close genetic relationship with English is not reflected in our results. Of the Germanic languages in our investigation, only Icelandic and Faroese are less similar to Frisian than English. However, when looking at the results from an English perspective, we discover that of all Germanic language varieties in our material the Frisian dialect of Hindeloopen is most similar to English. As mentioned before, this dialect is highly conservative and furthermore it is spoken in a coastal place, which provides for easy contact with England. Also the Frisian dialect of Wetsens is more similar to English than the remaining Germanic languages. The other Frisian varieties are found elsewhere in the middle of the ranking. Among the non-Frisian varieties, Dutch appears to be most similar to English. However, all Germanic languages, including Frisian and Dutch, show a large linguistic distance to English, all distances being above 60%. The development of the English language has thus clearly taken place independently from the other Germanic languages, which can be explained by the strong influence from non-Germanic languages, especially French. Also Icelandic shows a large distance to all other Germanic languages (from 54.1% to 70.0%), but in the Icelandic case this is explained by the conservative nature of this language rather than by language contact phenomena. Faroese is somewhat less conservative, but still shows rather large distances to the other languages (between 53.6% and 67.7%). The distances between the other Nordic languages are smaller (between 43.4% and 47%), as was expected given that the three Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||