Anglo-Frisian languages

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Originally England, Scottish Lowlands and the North Sea coast from Friesland to Jutland; today worldwide
Linguistic classification: Indo-European
Glottolog: angl1264[1]
Approximate present day distribution of the Anglo-Frisian languages in Europe.




Hatched areas indicate where multilingualism is common.

The Anglo-Frisian languages is the group of West Germanic languages that includes English and Frisian.

The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinguished from other West Germanic languages by several sound changes: the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, Anglo-Frisian brightening, and palatalization of /k/:

  • English cheese and West Frisian tsiis, but Dutch kaas, Low German Kees, and German Käse
  • English church and West Frisian tsjerke, but Dutch kerk, Low German Kerk, Kark, and German Kirche

The early Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon speech communities lived close enough together to form a linguistic crossroads which is why they share some of the traits otherwise only typical of Anglo-Frisian languages.[2] However, despite their common origins, English and Frisian have become very divergent, largely due to the heavy Old Norse and Norman French influences on English and similarly heavy Dutch and Low German influences on Frisian. The result is that Frisian now has a great deal in common with Dutch and the adjacent Low German dialects, bringing it into the West Germanic dialect continuum, whereas English has stronger North Germanic and Romance influences than the languages on the mainland.


The Anglo-Frisian family tree is:

Anglo-Frisian developments[edit]

The following is a summary of the major sound changes affecting vowels in chronological order.[3] For additional detail, see Phonological history of Old English.

  1. Backing and nasalization of West Germanic a and ā before a nasal consonant
  2. Loss of n before a spirant, resulting in lengthening and nasalization of preceding vowel
  3. The present and preterite plurals reduced to a single form
  4. A-fronting: WGmc a, āæ, ǣ, even in the diphthongs ai and au (see Anglo-Frisian brightening)
  5. palatalization of Proto-Germanic *k and *g before front vowels (but not phonemicization of palatals)
  6. A-restoration: æ, ǣa, ā under the influence of neighboring consonants
  7. Second fronting: OE dialects (except West Saxon) and Frisian ǣē
  8. A-restoration: a restored before a back vowel in the following syllable (later in the Southumbrian dialects); Frisian æuau → Old Frisian ā/a
  9. OE breaking; in West Saxon palatal diphthongization follows
  10. i-mutation followed by syncope; Old Frisian breaking follows
  11. Phonemicization of palatals and assibilation, followed by second fronting in parts of West Mercia
  12. Smoothing and back mutation


These are the words for the numbers one to ten in the Anglo-Frisian languages:

Language 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
English one two three four five six seven eight nine ten
Scots[4] ane
twa three fower five sax seiven aicht nine ten
Yola oan twye dhree vour veeve zeese zeven ayght neen dhen
West Frisian ien twa trije fjouwer fiif seis sân acht njoggen tsien
Saterland Frisian aan twäi
träi fjauwer fieuw säks soogen oachte njugen tjoon
North Frisian (Mooring dialect) iinj
fjouer fiiw seeks soowen oocht nüügen tiin

* Ae /eː/, /jeː/ is the adjectival form used before nouns.[5]

Comparison of West Frisian with English, Dutch and German[edit]

West Frisian English Dutch German
dei day dag Tag
rein rain regen Regen
wei way weg Weg
neil nail nagel Nagel
tsiis cheese kaas Käse
tsjerke church
kirk (Scotland)
kerk Kirche
tegearre together samen
sibbe sibling[note 1] sibbe Sippe
kaai key sleutel Schlüssel
ha west have been (was) ben geweest bin gewesen
twa skiep two sheep twee schapen zwei Schafe
hawwe have hebben haben
ús us ons uns
hynder horse paard
ros (dated)
Ross (dated)
brea bread brood Brot
hier hair haar Haar
ear ear oor Ohr
doar door deur Tür
grien green groen Grün
swiet sweet zoet süß
troch through door durch
wiet wet nat nass
each eye oog Auge
dream dream droom Traum
it giet oan it goes on het gaat door es geht weiter/los

Alternative grouping[edit]

Main article: Ingvaeonic languages

Ingvaeonic, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that comprises Old Frisian, Old English[6] and Old Saxon.[7]


The grouping was first proposed in Nordgermanen und Alemannen (1942) by the German linguist and philologist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984), as an alternative to the strict tree diagrams which had become popular following the work of the 19th-century linguist August Schleicher and which assumed the existence of an Anglo-Frisian group.[9]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Original meaning was "relative" which has become "brother or sister" in English.


  1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Anglo-Frisian". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. 
  2. ^ The German linguist Friedrich Maurer rejected Anglo-Frisian as a historical subdivision of the Germanic languages. Instead, he proposed North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic, a common ancestor of Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon.
  3. ^ Robert D. Fulk, “The Chronology of Anglo-Frisian Sound Changes”, Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, eds., Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., Thomas S.B. Johnston, and Oebele Vries (Amsterdam: Rodopoi, 1998), 185.
  4. ^ Depending on dialect 1. en, jɪn, in, wan *e:, je: 2. twɑ:, twɔ:, twe:, twa: 3. θrəi, θri:, tri: 4. 'fʌu(ə)r, fuwr 5. fai:v, fɛv 6. saks 7. 'si:vən, 'se:vən, 'səivən 8. ext, ɛçt 9. nəin, nin 10. tɛn
  6. ^ Also known as Anglo-Saxon.
  7. ^ Some include West Flemish. Cf. Bremmer (2009:22).
  8. ^ For a full discussion of the areal changes involved and their relative chronologies, see Voyles (1992).
  9. ^ "Friedrich Maurer (Lehrstuhl für Germanische Philologie - Linguistik)". Retrieved 2013-06-24. 

Further reading[edit]

  • Friedrich Maurer (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.
  • Wolfram Euler (2013), Das Westgermanische [subtitle missing] (West Germanic: from its Emergence in the 3rd up until its Dissolution in the 7th Century CE: Analyses and Reconstruction). 244 p., in German with English summary, Verlag Inspiration Un Ltd., London/Berlin, ISBN 978-3-9812110-7-8.