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Sunday 23 August 2009

Oh my goodness, finally a windmill!!! And some language : )

1993 Holland Pictures, Images and Photos
and some cows... coos

The Frisian Islands are an archipelago of Islands spread along the eastern edge of the North Sea along the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany. Now for the rest of the story. Contemporary Celts, most noteably the Irish and the Scots, speak an Anglo-Frisian language just as their English and American-English counterparts do. Here's how. Anglo-Frisian is a subdivision of Germanic languages, which is in turn divided into several sub-categories:

------Anglo-Frisian, or Insular Anglo-Frisian, Languages--English and Scots (as opposed to Scots-Gaelic, which is Celtic)

------Frisian, or Continental Anglo-Frisian--West Frisian, Saterland Frisian, or East Frisian, and North Frisian

Anglo-Frisian languages are characterized by the palatalization of the Proto-Germanic k to a coronal affricate between front vowels. In other words, English speakers say cheese instead of kase (German) or kaas (Dutch). Nevertheless, it is also noticeable that English and Scots have a similar vocabulary to Dutch and German. English church is Scots kirk, Dutch kerk, and German kirche.

Highland Scots* may be Celtic, and a few still speak Scottish Gaelic just as their Irish cousins many speak Irish Gaelic. However, many of the inhabitants of Scotland (more specifically 1.5 million of them), Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland speak a version of English known as "braid" (or broad) Scots, which is part of the Anglo-Frisian language family.

Basically, many of us in the north of the British Isles speak Germanic sounding languages... And many of our words are the same as Frisian today... We in the north of England say, 'Broon coo', for Brown Cow... The Dutch/Frisian is identical...

Crazy, huh?!

windmills Pictures, Images and Photos

5 comments:

Jinksy said...

Languages interweave one with another to form a cloak of communication...

Bee said...

I just got back from the Lake District and it made me happy when the young waitress said "scone" (long o) instead of "scon."

Did you take the windmill picture?

Saz said...

this may be crazee, but it is interesting on a sunday afternoon...
when I've stomped upstairs in a teenage wombat of a mood..


saz x

Hadriana's Treasures said...

I like to compare languages too. There are many similarities...of which you probably know more than I. It was interesting when I said "tyke" in front of a Swedish guy...he said they use the same word for female dog. At least I think that is what he said!

Anonymous said...
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Something I wrote earlier...

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