3 Reasons Why You Should Learn Frisian

You know more Frisian you think you do (even if you’ve never heard about it).

When it comes to Germanic languages, most language learners focus on German and Dutch. Fewer people are learning Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. And up to this day, I have only met one fellow polyglot who is studying a language that is a unique and fascinating mix of all the above-mentioned languages: Frisian.

You might be wondering why someone would even bother to learn Frisian. It’s a minority language after all. I get it. However, the language is full of surprises to yet be discovered. Here are three reasons why:

1. The language has been around for at least 2,000 years

Consequently, there is no single Frisian language as such. There is West Frisian spoken in Friesland, the Netherlands, and North Frisian and East Frisian in Germany — two other varieties of Frisian that are much smaller. It should also be mentioned that these languages are not mutually intelligible. There are roughly 450,000 native speakers of Frisian in the Netherlands. North Frisian is spoken by about 8,000 to 10,000 native speakers and East Frisian (also known as Saterfrisian) is spoken by 2,000 native speakers. West Frisian is considered a “vulnerable” language. The other two varieties are “severely endangered”. Side note: in this post, I will focus on the similarities of West Frisian with other Germanic languages (hereafter: Frisian).