How are English and Frisian related?

Answer 1

English and Frisian are the two languages most closely related to each other. Both were the same language about 1500 years ago which was spoken on the north coast of Europe between the modern Netherlands and Denmark. Several tribes of people speaking this language migrated to Britain about from about 400-500 AD. The people who remained became the Frisians, the people who went to Britain became the Anglo-Saxons. Frisian is NOT more closely related to Dutch than it is to English. One of the reasons it looks more Dutch on the surface is that English has had so many borrowed words from French. If you look at the GRAMMAR of the two languages and at the SOUND SYSTEMS of the two languages, it is crystal clear how closely related they are. Borrowed words are NOT a measure of relationship between languages.

EDIT: Yes, Alpine Alli is correct. I did not mean that no other pair of languages in the world are more closely related to one another than are English and Frisian. I meant that neither English nor Frisian has a closer relative than the other. And, BTW, linguists do not consider Serbian and Croatian to be different languages. It is only politics that makes them so, not a linguistic determination.

Answer 2

Taivo's answer is good but I think he meant that Frisian is the language most closely related to English as opposed to English and Frisian are the two languages in the world most closely related to each other. (Since they were the same language 1500 years ago whereas Serbian and Croatian were considered the same language until more like 15 years ago.)

Basically, languages are said to be "related" if they broke off from a common ancestor. The more recently they broke off, the more closely related they are. I think borrowing words and expressions (like between English and French) is more like a stepsister relationship...

Answer 3

Frisians are one of the groups that went to England during the Anglo-Saxon Invasion. Eventually the groups all assimilated and became known as the Anglo-Saxons (including anglos, saxons, jutes, frisians).

Answer 4

Frisians were German Barbarians that invaded England in the 3rd Century.

Answer 5

It's meant to be the language most closely related to English, but surely it's closer to Dutch than what I'm writing now. Try to make your way through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Frisian:

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/fri.htm

and English:

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm

Answer 6

Like somebody already mentioned, they have been in basic terms approximately the comparable language 500 years in the past. studying frisian takes in basic terms as long as studying dutch or afrikaans, german takes somewhat longer. in the netherlands this is attainable to learn frisian at college, yet provided which you have a VWO-degree with german in it