Frisian Frisian is the language of the historical Frisian people, now an official language in the Dutch province of Friesland, with dialects still spoken on the Frisian Islands, and in a few German villages. Frisian, most closely related to English, belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group in the western branch of the Germanic languages. Frisian was once the prominent tongue along the North Sea coast and on nearby islands, from the present Dutch-Belgian border to the modern German-Danish border. Since the 16th century, Frisian has gradually been replaced by Dutch and Low German, but it was revived in the 20th century. There are over 700,000 total speakers. |