Frisian
Frisian
is the language of the historical Frisian people, now an official language
in the Dutch province of Friesland, with dialects still spoken on the Frisian
Islands, and in a few German villages. Frisian, most closely related to English,
belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group in the western branch of the Germanic
languages. Frisian was once the prominent tongue along the
North Sea coast and on nearby islands, from the present Dutch-Belgian border to
the modern German-Danish border. Since the 16th century, Frisian has gradually
been replaced by Dutch and Low German, but it was revived in the 20th century.
There are over 700,000 total speakers.
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