Editing Frisian languages (section)

===Old Frisian===
{{Main|Old Frisian}}
In the [[Early Middle Ages]] the Frisian lands stretched from the area around [[Bruges]], in what is now [[Belgium]], to the river [[Weser]], in northern [[Germany]]. At that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern [[North Sea]] coast. Today this region is sometimes referred to as Great Frisia or Frisia Magna, and many of the areas within it still treasure their Frisian heritage, even though in most places the Frisian languages have been lost.

Frisian is the language most closely related to [[English language|English]] and [[Scots language|Scots]], but after at least five hundred years of being subject to the influence of [[Dutch language|Dutch]], modern Frisian in some aspects bears a greater similarity to Dutch than to English; one must also take into account the centuries-long drift of English away from Frisian. Thus the two languages have become less mutually intelligible over time, partly due to the influence which Dutch and [[Low German]] have had on Frisian, and partly due to the vast influence some languages (in particular [[Norman French]]) have had on English throughout the centuries.

[[Old Frisian]],<ref name=Bremmer />{{Page needed|date=October 2021}} however, was very similar to [[Old English language|Old English]]. Historically, both English and Frisian are marked by the loss of the Germanic nasal in words like ''us'' (''ús''; ''uns'' in German), ''soft'' (''sêft''; ''sanft'') or ''goose'' (''goes''; ''Gans''): see [[Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law]]. Also, when followed by some vowels, the Germanic ''k'' softened to a ''ch'' sound; for example, the Frisian for ''cheese'' and ''church'' is ''tsiis'' and ''tsjerke'', whereas in [[Dutch language|Dutch]] it is ''kaas'' and ''kerk'', and in [[German language|High German]] the respective words are ''Käse'' and ''Kirche''. Contrarily, this did not happen for ''chin'' and ''choose'', which are ''kin'' and ''kieze''.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last1=Gooskens |first1=Charlotte |last2=Heeringa |first2= Wilbert |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237534065 |title=The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area |date=May 2012 |journal=ResearchGate |access-date=25 August 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dicts.info/dictionary.php?k1=1&k2=178 |title=English to Frisian dictionary}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=October 2021|reason=ResearchGate not reliable}}

One rhyme demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Frisian," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages (West Frisian: "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")<ref>The History of English: A Linguistic Introduction. Scott Shay, Wardja Press, 2008, {{ISBN|0-615-16817-5}}, {{ISBN|978-0-615-16817-3}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=October 2021}}

One major difference between Old Frisian and modern Frisian is that in the Old Frisian period ({{Circa|1150|1550}}) [[Declension|grammatical cases]] still existed. Some of the texts that are preserved from this period are from the 12th or 13th, but most are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Generally, all these texts are restricted to legalistic writings. Although the earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century, there are a few examples of [[runic]] inscriptions from the region which are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language. These runic writings however usually do not amount to more than single- or few-word inscriptions, and cannot be said to constitute [[literature]] as such. The transition from the Old Frisian to the Middle Frisian period (c.1550-c.1820) in the 16th century is based on the fairly abrupt halt in the use of Frisian as a written language.