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East Frisian Low Saxon

 

 
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East Frisian Low Saxon
 
 
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East Frisian Low Saxon is a West Low German dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
 spoken in the East Frisia
East Frisia

East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the Germany States of Germany of Lower Saxony.It connects Friesland with the district of Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, all of which belong to the historic and geographic Frisia....
n peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony lies in northern Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen States of Germany of Germany. In rural areas Low German is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining....
. It is used quite frequent in everyday speech 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. However, both active and passive language skills are in a state of decrease.

East Frisian Low Saxon is not to be confused with the Eastern Frisian language
Saterland Frisian language

Saterland Frisian, also known as Sater Frisian or Saterlandic , is the last living dialect of the East Frisian language. It is closely related to the other Frisian languages?North Frisian language, which, like Saterland Frisian, is spoken in Germany and West Frisian language, which is spoken in the Netherlands....
; the latter, spoken by about 2000 individuals in the Saterland region, is a Frisian language, not Low German.

There are several dialects in East Frisian Low Saxon.






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East Frisian Low Saxon is a West Low German dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
 spoken in the East Frisia
East Frisia

East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the Germany States of Germany of Lower Saxony.It connects Friesland with the district of Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, all of which belong to the historic and geographic Frisia....
n peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony lies in northern Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen States of Germany of Germany. In rural areas Low German is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining....
. It is used quite frequent in everyday speech 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. However, both active and passive language skills are in a state of decrease.

East Frisian Low Saxon is not to be confused with the Eastern Frisian language
Saterland Frisian language

Saterland Frisian, also known as Sater Frisian or Saterlandic , is the last living dialect of the East Frisian language. It is closely related to the other Frisian languages?North Frisian language, which, like Saterland Frisian, is spoken in Germany and West Frisian language, which is spoken in the Netherlands....
; the latter, spoken by about 2000 individuals in the Saterland region, is a Frisian language, not Low German.

There are several dialects in East Frisian Low Saxon. There are two main groups of dialects. The dialects in the east, called Harlinger Platt, are strongly influenced by Northern Low Saxon
Northern Low Saxon

Northern Low Saxon is a West Low German dialect.It is considered to be "Standard language Low German" within Germany because it is spoken and understood in a huge central area including most of Lower Saxony, Bremen , Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, areas north of the Benrath line....
 of Oldenburg
Oldenburg

||-||-||-||}Oldenburg is an Independent City in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the western part of the state between the cities of Bremen and Groningen , at the Hunte river....
. The western dialects are closer to the Low Saxon Language spoken in the Dutch
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
 province of Groningen
Groningen (province)

Groningen is the northeasternmost province of the Netherlands. In the east it borders the Germany state of Lower Saxony , in the south Drenthe, in the west Friesland and in the north the Wadden Sea....
, Groningan Low Saxon.

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 was 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.

East Frisian features frequent use of diminutives, as in the Dutch language
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
, e.g. 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.

The dialects spoken in East Frisia are closely related to those spoken in the Dutch province of Groningen (Gronings|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: and so forth.

Examples
East Frisian Low SaxonGroningsNorthern Low SaxonEnglish
her
beautiful, nice, fine
was
to happen
to talk


The standard greeting is Moin
Moin

Moin is a Frisian languages and Low German greeting from East Frisia, Southern Schleswig , Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eastern Netherlands and Southern Jutland in Denmark, meaning "hello"....
 (moi in Gronings), used 24 hours a day. Its use has spread from East Frisia to the whole of northern Germany, and it is heard more and more in the rest of Germany as well.

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