| Also Known As: Nordfriesisch
Description:
North Frisian is a minority language of Germany, spoken by about 10,000 people in North Frisia. There are two main dialectal divisions: those of the mainland and the insular dialects. There is no standard variety, although some have suggested the mainland Mooring dialect. The language is part of the larger group of the West Germanic Frisian languages.
North Frisian is an endangered language, as in most places children no longer learn it. Exceptions are a few villages on the islands of Föhr and Amrum and the Risum-Lindholm area. All speakers of North Frisian are at least bilingual (North Frisian and Standard German). Many are trilingual (North Frisian, Standard German and Low German) and, especially along the Danish border, quadrilingualism used to be widespread (North Frisian, Standard German, Low German and South Jutlandic).
On 24 December 2004 a state law became effective in Schleswig-Holstein that recognises the North Frisian language for official use in the Nordfriesland district and on Heligoland.
The sentence displayed below in many variants reads, "'Shine, old moon, shine!', cried Häwelmann, but neither the moon nor the stars were anywhere to be seen; they had all already..... full article at Wikipedia |
