Everything about East Frisian Low Saxon totally explained
East Frisian Low Saxon is a
West Low German dialect spoken in the
Eastern Friesland peninsula of northwestern
Lower Saxony. It is used quite frequent in everyday talk there. About half of the East Frisian population in the coastal region uses
Platdüütsk. A number of individuals, despite not being active speakers of Low Saxon, are able to understand it to some extent. But both active and passive language skills are in a state of decrease.
Although the
East Frisian language is spoken by about 2000 individuals in the three villages of Ramsloh, Strücklingen and Scharrel in the Saterland region outside Eastern Friesland, in this context East Frisian Low Saxon is unrelated to Frisian.
There are several dialects in East Frisian Low Saxon. There are two main groups of dialects. The dialects in the east - called Harlinger Platt - have already stronger influences by the
Northern Low Saxon of
Oldenburg. The western dialects are closer to the Low Saxon Language spoken in
Groningen (NL).
East Frisian Low Saxon differs from Northern Low Saxon in several aspects, which are often linked to Frisian heritage. The language originally spoken in East Frisia and Groningen used to be Frisian, so the current Low Saxon dialects build on a Frisian substrate, which has led to a large amount of unique lexical, syntactic, and phonological items which differ from other Low Saxon variants.
We find a frequent use of diminutives like in the
Dutch language, for example Footjes = little feet, Kluntje = piece of sugar. In many cases diminutives of names especially female ones have become names of their own. For example: Antje (from Anna), Trientje (from Trina = Katharina) etc.
Based on the special history of Eastern Friesland there are influences and loans from French and the Dutch language which in parts of East Frisia for a long time was the language of the church.
The dialects spoken in East Frisia are closely related to those spoken in the Dutch province of Groningen (
Grunnegs, Grünnigs) and in Northern Drenthe (Noordenvelds). The biggest difference seem to be that of loanwords (from Dutch or German, resp.) and the vowel shift in Gronings: [ɛi] → [ɑi,ɔi], [ɑi] → [ai], [ou] → [ɑu] and so forth.
| East Frisian Low Saxon |
ronings |
orthern Low Saxon |
nglish |
| [høːə] |
[høːə] |
[eə] |
her |
| [moːi] |
[moːi] |
[ʃœːin] |
beautiful, nice, fine |
| [vas] |
[vas] |
[vɛ.iə] |
was |
| [gebø:rɪn] |
[ɣəbø:rɪn] |
[passe.rn] |
to happen |
| [prɔ.tɪn,proːtɪn] |
[pro.tɪn] |
[snakɪn] |
to talk |
The standard greeting formula is
Moin (moi in Gronings), used 24 hours a day. It is nowadays used in whole northern Germany, but more and more spreading to the east, west and south.
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