The Frisian Perspective on "Talking to a Frisian farmer in Friesland with Old English"
Frisian is the closest living language to English (after Scots), and it is frequently possible for speakers of Frisian and English to communicate across language barriers. In a famous clip from Mongrel Nation, Eddie Izzard went to Fryslân and tried to speak Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, with a Frisian farmer. Having studied both Old English as well as being a speaker of Frisian, I looked at this video from both perspectives, seeing where, and why, they were able to communicate and what caused issues with the mutual intelligibility.
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My father grew up speaking Frisian. The family emigrated when he was a boy, and when he went to college (the first in his family!) he took Old English as his language requirement. He said that he could pretty much sight-read Beowulf.
What this shows me is that a guy with a lot of confidence and no fear of making a fool of himself, even if he hasn't fully mastered what he's attempting to do, can, after stepping well out of his own comfort zone, cause someone else to have a novel experience, and in spite of the inevitable misunderstandings, can still lead to cooperation and positive exchange. Fascinating. Courage pays fine dividends.
Yeah man unless you step off your front porch you won't go anywhere
Exactly! Being humble and patient goes a long way when learning and using a foreign language.
@@NathanHedglin Now I just need to be humble and patient as a learning pharmacist assistant working at a Chemist Warehouse store. It can be frustrating to make mistakes on the job, but I guess how else can I learn? And my ego can get bruised when I can't answer the simplest of customer enquiries, even though a long time ago, I had certain qualifications, but today, none of them really mean much anymore.
He who dares wins, Roders.
@@jimcy1319 Nice! As a quick update which nobody asked for, turns out, I'm starting to succeed as a Pharmacy Assistant at the local Chemist Warehouse. I guess it all started to pay off, even though at the start, I guess, I never saw it coming, or even imagined it possible. Just comes to show, you just have to make a start, not worrying excessively about the results, and the results will come knocking in good time, unbidden.
I love how, as a German, I understand both of them quite well...
Do understand em as well as Norwegian.
@@iLovettGolf same!
As someone who speaks both English and German as a foreign language, I could also understand both of them 90%. It is till beyond me, how Germans are so struggling with English, like it is science... basically almost the same language XD Try to learn them all as a person who is coming from a totally different language family.
me too, although the strong modern accent of the english guy does make some words sound a bit off ....and Hilbert has a quite noticeable modern dutch accent when he pronounces frisian words.....at least it has a different vibe than the north-frisian of my area, which sounds more like a weird mix of german and old norse.....
@@ingi2785 tbh I think most Germand struggle more with the pronounciation and conversation speed than with the actual language. I mean, I grew up as a German and after school I spent two years in Scotland, which really helped to get rid of that "school English"
One thing might be added: The version of Frisian that you are speaking there in the Netherlands, differs a lot from the German version of Frisian, spoken in East Frisia. Both differ from the original old language, but the Low German version in East Frisia seems to be more closely related to Old (and even modern) English, than the Dutch version.
Naturally, as the anglo-saxons came from Germany and Jutland not the Nederlands.
😮
@@gunarsmiezis9321 it is important to note that while people did move, genetic evidence shows the majority of genes in the British isles are Celtic. But, just that there are blue jeans everywhere and they teach English in the schools doesn’t necessarily imply a mass migration of Americans into Central Europe. Culture migrates much more than people.
I've seen videos on this in the past and my impression was that the language people in East Frisia speak sounds a lot like Gronings, which I believe is Nedersaksisch (or lower saxon in English).
@@Brand131 Groningen and East Frisia are not only geographically close to each other. Historically speaking, they are one blood and one culture. But Frisian identity was shattered into many pieces throughout history. It is about time to reunite. Look up ""Groep fan Auwerk", if you want to learn more. „Lever dood as Slav“, my friend. :3
I reckon that if you had a fluid old English speaker this conversation would go much more smoothly. Like when the farmer wasn't immediately understanding a word, a native/fluent speaker would have a depth of other descriptive words to use to help point them in the right direction. Like, the farmer didn't understand the verb used to mean to buy, but Eddie could have said 'money for the brown cow, how much money' and the idea would have been clearer. Basically, I think that despite having a very good conversation, it was hindered by Eddie Izzard's fluency in Old English, rather than the mutual intelligibility between old English and modern frisian.
Indeed... and a fluid old English speaker would have likely understood or at least been able to make an educated guess as to what word was not understood. Moreover in the instance of not understanding understand, an old English speaker would likely recognize the Frisian construction of "ferstean" - "forstan[d]" - more readily than a Frisian would recognize its old English counterpart and probably have a chuckle at the Frisian's reply of not understanding the word understand. But here I don't think Eddie caught on to what word was not understood and that seems to have been the case throughout the rest of their conversation.
@@lahsilaz6880 Rough Translation (from learning some German): I will do that! I can [speak?] enough English, ??? to speak some Frisian from? English.
That is a very good point. Native speakers of related languages can play a sort of synonym minesweeper to make themselves understood. I think they would be also more attune to sound changes and figure out ways of converting sounds. I got the impression that Eddie Izzard wouldn't have been able to analyse the Old English he was speaking. Understand and ferstaen have the same stem, only the prefix is different. I reckon a native speaker would have figured than out fairly soon.
@@alinaqirizvi1441 I would guess "cann" is "know" (from "kennen") instead of "can".
That is actually a very good tip to anyone trying to speak a different language. If you don't know a word, but can describe what you mean well enough, the other person will understand. That is obviously not speaking fluently, but language is for communication, and if you can communicate without being fluent, you're already halfay there.
The biggest flaw with the experiment is that frisians know Dutch too. A lot of the old English words that are super different in frisian can be understood if you know Dutch aswell
And most Frisians know English as well.
@@qwertyuiopzxcfgh Maybe not an elderly farmer in the 1980s-1990s (whenever this was recorded) but yes
It's not a real expriment. Perhaps this old farmer in the 80's or 90's didn't understand Dutch.
It's crazy to think that English, Scots, Yola, and Frisian are like four brothers, one is well-known around the world, whereas the other three are locals in the place where four of them are from, yet they still call each other and hang out. It's crazy!
What we know as "English" today, is an Amalgam of many other languages. Some parts of it are French (or Frankish, if you like), other parts are Scandinavian ("old Norse", from the Vikings) and all of that was put on top of the Germanic language of Frisian. Blend all of this together for a few centuries and voila: English!
@@Empyronaut well it’s got Latin parts but nearly all everyday words are of Germanic origin.
@@Empyronaut That's not how English works, nor is there any need to say "English" and denigrate it. English without quotation marks is just a germanic language with yes a lot of loans, whoopty doo, not some mishmash. Specifically one that is closely related to languages like Frisian
@@Empyronaut Bud, what you said there is a common linguistic misconception, English is not a mismatch of languages, it's its own branch of West Germanic language which is heavily influenced, i swear if i see this "mixed language" one more time, i'll sh*t myself to death.
Not sure Yola really deserves to be here with the rest of them given its long dead lmao.
Interesting how the video was getting recommended now, not like most KZhead recommendations
Funny how it works isn't it! This one is always being recommended to me.
@@historywithhilbert146 Probably from watching your videos I only saw it last week, I liked the analysis here
@@historywithhilbert146 Just pointing out that Eddie is trans and doesn't go by he/him anymore. She's transgender I'm pretty sure.
@@bobettepancakes at the time of the og video she was still a he, so 'he' makes more sense here.
@@Lord_RFAS fair enough
I think when the farmer said “I don‘t understand that“ he was actually expressing bewilderment that he could sort of follow what Eddie was saying even though it was clearly not Frisian.
My sentiment as well.
In Frisian (and Dutch) there is a different word for expressing bewilderment, ferstean specifically means understanding words or a sentence as far as I know. If he was bewildered he would be saying "Ik begryp dat net", which has both meanings, or "Ik snap dat net", which only means bewilderment
@@Rerbun in Flemish though, the phrase "k verstoan da nie" can mean both "I don't understand" as well as "I don't get it"...
@@thefreephilosopher7398 interesting!
Modern high german also has both, "verstehen" and "begreifen". "verstehen" is usually more about linguistically not understanding while "begreifen" is usually more about not understanding a concept or idea, but both can be used for both. And even the sentences "ich verstehe das nicht" and "ich begreife das nicht" show how close the languages are.
What did the french man say to the netherlander outside his house? ‘Come inside, it’s Frisian out there’
Oh very good ;) Also a medieval folk etymology for the name Frisia actually!
Should it not be "What did the french man say to the Dutchman outside his house? ‘Come inside, it’s Frisian out there
@@jeddaniels2283 Yep, I think it should. I forgot what dutchmen are called I guess.
Why would the Frenchman speak in the English language.
@@historywithhilbert146 once upon a time my mom took me to a farm where they had newborn pigs. My mom asks me what they were going to do with them. "We're sending them to friesland", "oh nice", "no ma'am, diep-Friesland"
50 odd years ago I worked with an old Aberdonian who couldn't moderate his dialect to make it intelligible even if his life depended on it, no criticism -some folk just can't. I barely understood him face to face but had no chance at all over the hand held radios we often used. An old Frisian sometimes put me out of my misery by cutting in on the frequency and translating English into English. The irony.
When I was in (American) high school we also had a brief study of Old English. My mother, who was from Germany, had no trouble reading it 😜
What highschool has old English?! Never heard of that here in the US
@@paulyperreira2795 Pasadena High School in California in 1966 🤪
@@loislewis5229 that’s so cool! Wish my old highschool had that. My school only had Spanish, French, and Italian for foreign language. Although since I’m in North Jersey, none of those languages are foreign lmaoo
@@paulyperreira2795 Oh, it was not a separate class but rather a portion of my English class. I took German in high school, but they also offered French and Latin.
@@loislewis5229 ahh I see. That’s super interesting
Hi Hilbert, I'm a Frisian, more specifically a "Hylper". Ive been watching some of your videos and really enjoy them. Hylpers is a small Frisian dialect which is closer to old Frisian then modern Frisian. If you would ever like to learn something about Hylpers hit me up.
Wikipedia says that Hlypers only has about 300 speakers. That's so cool that you can speak it! I'd love to know what it sounds like.
I'd like to
Me too.
@@KungFucianist I come from a city only 3 kilometres away from where they speak Hylpers and I don't understand a word of it.
@@HugoWorkum Liid út Workum doage ek naat..
As a speaker of modern Frisian I could understand the whole conversation, but only because I speak modern English as well (the farmer wasn't as fluent in English I think). The words that I could not understand from Frisian, like the word 'bycgan', I could understand because it comes closer to the modern word 'buying' in English. It is really interesting to hear Old English as a Frisian as it sounds different, but also familiar.
Is there a word in Frisian that is a cognate of the English word booth? I ask this because the boer seemed to mistranslate bycgan as meaning a shed; and English got the word from the Old Norse 'buth', which was a small hut or shelter. We have the place name Bootle not far from where I live near Liverpool, which has this as an origin.
The only words I can think of are: - Skuorre (which is a big shed, in most cases particularity used for animals on a farm, a barn) - Hok (A normal shed, to store tools and other stuff) - Hutte (Just a hut) For the word booth (as in a car) we use 'kofferbak' (literal translation: suitcase box) or 'achterbak' (behind box). As you can see our language found another word for it, but that's not too strange as it is quite a new word. I think the farmer was trying to guess what 'bycgan' could mean as he tried to repeat it for himself, but he just did not understand. So he just went with the words that he did understand, which was the brown cow. I don't think there is a similar word for booth in the Frisian I speak. Edit: Another thing I just thought up is that he might have thought 'bycgan' sounds a bit like 'bûten' (which you say like the country 'Bhutan', but then replace the 'a' when an -uh- sound). That word means 'outside', but they were outside so it would not make a lot of sense.
@@alfresco8442 We have the word bûthûs. Which kinda sounds like 'boot hoos'. It translates to cow house, country house, cowshed.
@@walterrob5567 That sounds exactly like what he's saying, Walter. We also have a few different words for a cowshed. One of which is shippon, which goes way back in Germanic and is related to both English 'shop' and German 'Schuppen'. The other is cow byre, which I think comes from the Old Norse equivalent of the W. Germanic burg...byr. In England, you can tell some Anglo Saxon settlements from the Viking, because English ones end in bury, borough or burgh and Norse ones end in by. The Old English version was spelt 'burh' but was pronounced exactly like a modern Nederlander might pronounce burg, with a slightly gutteral g.
@@alfresco8442 This video is about Old English and modern Frisian. However, there's also Old Frisian which was was replaced with modern Frisian around 500 years ago. I'm not familiar with Old Frisian except for some words. But it's interesting to see that the Old Frisian word for mouth is mūth. The modern Frisian word is mûle.
I've often thought about this video and whether he sounded ANYTHING like what he hoped, this has cleared that up haha. Great video
Thanks Mike! I was hoping some people would indeed be wondering that when I recently watched the video again after many years. It does have some interesting implications for mutual intelligibility like the role of syntax and cognates etc.
@@historywithhilbert146 unironically his old English is better than I expected it'd be.
Yep i thought this was awesome as a kid but now its a bit lel and very english
For anyone who wants to know: the farmer misunderstood the word 'buchan' (buy) for the frisian word bûthús which means shed. Here in friesland it is usually used to refer to a cow shed, and skuorre is most used to refer to a normal shed.
Cognate with English booth (or bothy) + house?
My father in law was Professor of Anglo-Saxon/Old English at Oxford. He visited the Frisian Islands and found the language very easy to understand and learn. So I have known for over 50 years that there is a very close connection between the two languages.
Being a Native Dutch speaker (spoiled by a lot of English and German) it was quite easy to understand.
I love this! I am convinced that if English had not been so influenced by French that modern English and modern Dutch would be more alike and there would probably be a high degree of mutual intelligibility between them.
As a fluent faroese speaker and someone who has family in Iceland, i could understand Frisian pretty well, while Old English was semi-understandable. But i must say, Old English sounds more like Icelandic while Frisian sounds more like Faroese.
hahha cool note about soundings!)
doesn't help that both old english and icelandic both use þ and ð
old English should sound a bit like icelandic. Old English and Old norse were somewhat intelligible between each other, though definitely different languages, and icelandic hasn't changed that much from old norse.
@@matteo-ciaramitaro Icelandic has huge changes in it's phonetics
@@unraed right, I mean grammar and spelling and vocabulary haven't changed that much (but they have changed a bit) and these two are important parts of intelligibility. Pronunciation is also very important. In some cases some vowel shifts moved closer to english but there were many that moved away. If we have the question of whether an old norse speaker would understand modern icelandic, there's a channel on youtube called ecolinguist that gets people who speak different languages together to see how intelligible they are, and when they did Norwegian, danish and icelandic with an old norse professor the icelandic and old norse speaker communicated very well. it's not a perfect experiment though because they both also know english, which may occasionally help with understanding, especially if a pronunciation has shifted closer to english.
There was a documentary on PBS in the US about 40 years ago called "the History of English". One segment covered how the two langauges are similar anf that even now certain selected entire sentences are identical in modern English and Frisian.
Hi. I have the Book The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. BBC Publications, Faber and Faber 1986. Chapter 7 re. the pioneers in US. Footnote on p.235 says. "Observant readers will notice, to their pain or pleasure, that this chapter has adopted American spellings". ! Liverpool UK 🕊️
“Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Fries.” sounds almost like the Frisian “Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.” That’s the classic rhyme that linguists use to show the relationship.
You should invite a frisian on & speak Old English to them to see if they could understand.
Could be a fun experiment to do at some point eh!
@@historywithhilbert146 yea it would be real interesting
I am Friesian and i volunteer for this experiment
I know that Simon Roper spoke Old English with a North Frisian if your interested in watching that
@@Bryce-yw8hf I've seen it
I find this really interesting. I have a fascination for Dutch and Firisian and not many people have heard of Frisian (not in Norway at least). Grat video!
As a Norwegian the following would sound very familiar to you: alve tolve trettjin fjirtjin
from what I understand the Frisians have traveled a lot in Scandinavia, many of them have also moved to Scandinavia as colorists because their country after a sea level rise. maybe your ancestors are Frisian 😉
@@walterrob5567 yes In norwegian it would be Elve Tolv Tretten Fjorten It might be written quite differently but when i pronounced them while reading your comment it sounds almost identical haha. Actually it sounds a lot like how my grandad who lived further indland would pronounce it. I
I was really surprised at how similar frisian is to norwegian!
my mother is Frisian, but I can't speak the Frisian language, something that I still regret.
Being fluent in (modern) English and Swedish, speaking German and some Dutch, I had little problem deciphering the Frisian and old English. The cases in old English doesn’t even feel that weird. The modern cognates in either of the known languages fills in the blanks. The more you look into it, the more you realise how closely related our languages are and how little extra work needs to be put in to at least get a rough idea of what is being said. _God jul!_ 😊
Yeah, English isn’t a real language, it’s four pidgins in a trench coat pretending to be Latin
2:18 Ferstiest do vs Verstehst du in German, interesting. 6:04 I actually use the word "cop" to mean "buy" all the time here in NorCal. Only when I was studying abroad did I realize that it was almost identical to Dutch "koppen" & German "kaufen". I think that Frisian & English were likely the most intelligible probably during the Middle English rather than Old English period. Germanic synonyms abounded & the pronunciation was much less divergent back then. After around the 12th century both Middle English & Frisian respectively underwent linguistic influence from the Normans, Norse, & Franconians which ultimately began to pull the two sister languages in different directions. Knowing both English & German has left me fascinated with Germanic languages. They are so close & yet so alien at the same time.
Kopen* in Dutch, koppen is to headbut in football😂
@@tijnaltena5718 headbutt
@@dickwagenaar3684 fair
Oh that'd be cool if that's where the slang verb "cop" came from
I’m like 99% sure that isn’t where the American slang “cop” comes from lol
Such a tiny detail, but the fact you pronounced the "we" in "we gan" the actual Geordie way rather than the standard English way shows a great attention to detail and love for what you do
dutch: we gaan... we're going
I only know German (and English, obviously), but I can see the relationship among the three languages! While the spellings are different, the pronunciations leave no doubt as to their origins. This is really cool! I always wonder how languages evolve. One can see the similarities among these three. Very interesting! I knew Eddie speaks fluent French, but I had no idea he was relatively fluent in old English! Amazing, funny man! I'd love to see that part where the old farmer takes him in the barn, hands him a pail and a stool, points at the cu/ko/Kuh,/cow and says, ok, bud, milk away! Thank you for sharing this insightful information!
The Frisian farmer is my dear uncle!!!!
Echt? De groetnis fan my! Asto it leuk fynst kinst faaks him de fideo sjen litte?
It is echt wier!! Ik ha de video trochstjoert nei de familie yn whatsapp. Myn heit is syn broer. Ik wenje net yn Fryslân, mar hâld fan de taal. De man is no 92 jier âld!
@@cynthiamolenaar770 Ik fyn dat echt sa moai - tige datst it sein hast! Machtich moai!
@@cynthiamolenaar770 Asto it net slim fynst soe ik graach wat freegje wolle deroer. At it om dy net núver is soest my in mail stjoere kinne nei historywithhilbert@gmail.com? Tige!
Despite the miscommunication, I really see it is interesting how modern Frisian and Old English are quite mutually intelligible
I really want to learn West Frisian. I've had a surprisingly hard time getting hold of good quality West Frisian learning resources, though.
Wes þu hal! Eddie Izzard's "ick ville boojan eene broon coo" video, I've always wanted to see it done with someone who actually knows the language. By the way the Old English in this video is like, criminally bad. And I don't mean Eddie's, I mean the "corrected" ones are really only marginally better. - Wes þu hal. Ic sprece Ealdenglisc. Understentst ðu me? - Ac þæt ic ne understande. - Ic eom Frisisc man. - Ic wille brune cu bycgan. - Brune cu. - Seo þe micle meolce macaþ. - Þu wilt hie melcan. - Þu wilt þa brune cu on Englalande melcan - For þam ciese ond for þære buteran - Seo brune cu, nu. - We gaþ to þære brunan cy.
This is very interesting! I can understand Fries and old English from my native Swedish!
Meaning Frisian, of course.
I’m half Brit half German and also learned plat deutsch from my grandmother… I feel very comfortable with the whole concept of the narrative… glorious
This video is very deep and beautiful, Frisian and Anglo Saxon were once one language, Anglo Frisian, the closest language today to Anglo Frisian, which is the father of Old Frisian and Old Anglo Saxon, is Stellinga, but for Stellinga to go back in Anglo Frisian, the old Anglo Saxon has to be incorporated into it again with West Frisian and North Frisian, Scots Doric also helps a lot to rescue the old language when combined with all these variants. Truly beautiful video.
As a native Spanish speaker who also speaks English as a second tongue and barely have an idea of German, I found this video very interesting, and even more the fact that I could understand some of what the Frisian farmer was speaking to the other fellow. Outstanding 😂. Greetings and thanks for this great vid.
This is a really cool video, I had some Frisian ancestors who started a dairy farm in South Africa, so they brought the brown cow with them.
Alan Shields Hamilton South Lanarkshire Scotland. From a Scottish perspective I found the Frisian simple enough to understand as it utalises some similar words to we use in Scots. My understanding is that it would also be easier for someone from Scotland & perhaps The North East of England to understand Frisian aswell as the standard Dutch language as all are very guttural in the sounds of the words. Keep Safe.
I actually think that even though the farmer didn't understand Eddie's exact phrases, he would have read between the lines. If he understood that Eddie wanted to milk the cow in England, by logical extension he'd be looking to buy
I never realized that the Dutch 'kopen' and English 'cheap' come from the same root (and same as the Frisian). Even though we do say 'goedkoop' to say cheap. (Literally 'goodbuy')
Old English also had the verb ceapan, meaning to buy...obviously cognate with kopen and kaufen. It still survives in phrases like to chop and change...to buy something then change your mind; and in place names like Chepstow (market place)...and the word 'cheap'.
Is the Modern English "to shop" not also from ceapan?
@@johnlove3505 You'd think so, but I believe it comes from the Old French Eschoppe meaning a booth. However many French words are of either Germanic or common origin; and eschoppe is related to the German Schopf (porch) and the English shippon (cow shed).
What a lovable farmer that is…I’d love to try to have a conversation with him in dutcherized English😅
as someone who speaks frisian and is from fyslan this is so fasinating! I never thought that it was this close to Old English! goed dien!
Good video. Ive seen the Eddie Izzard piece before and found it really interesting. I studied in Hull and heard that back until Victorian times the crews that fished the North Sea could converse in English dialects and Frisian (similar premise) not sure how true that would back in the 1800s but l suppose words like skipper, boat and fish remain intelligible.
Germanic sea words in English: Sea, boat, starboard , boat , ship , skipper , Hull , sail , island , beach , strand , dive , deep , yacht , swim , bait and likely many more.
I'm from the US and was in Paris during the 2nd Iraq war. Few Americans were in Paris then. I would hear people speaking what I thought was English because of the cadence only to find out it was Dutch. It was an interesting experience. Incidentally my 2 favorite cities are Paris and Amsterdam. I enjoy your posts Hilbert!
Really fascinating perspective, especially about the word order impacting on the understanding of 'milk' as a noun vs verb. I just want to say that the palatalisation of 'ik'->'ic' in Old English mainly impacted on the Saxon dialects. Modern English mostly descended from Anglian dialects, Mercian and Northumbrian, which either retained 'ik' or debuccalised to 'ih'. I'd expect the same with sprecce, since we say we 'speak' English today and not 'speach' (as a verb).
It's crazy how even after 1000+ years of the languages growing apart and changing I, as a German and English native speaker can understand quite a lot of the conversation. Also when you mentioned the 'chapman' and 'cheap' root word(?) I'm pretty sure it's also the root word for the german word(s) 'kaufen' (Kauf, Kaufmann). Thank you for making this, very interesting!
Shakespeare and Chaucer are easier to understand if you hear them than if you read them. Likewise, French, Spanish, and Italian speakers find Interlingua (a constructed language based mostly on late Vulgar Latin) similar to how English speakers find Shakespeare.
I speak Dutch, German, English, and my local Ripuarian dialect. This was so easy to follow while I don't speak Frisian or Old English at al.
I'm an American who studied German in high school and lived in the Newcastle are of England in my 20s. I could understand much of the conversation...
man even with his mistakes, the fact that it remains so mutually intelligible after a thousand years is amazing.
as a german who knows english and can understand a decent chunk of german accents (including frisian german and saxon german) its very easy to follow the conversation. i think i could improvise my way through such a conversation too.
Born in Friesland, but due to my parents not being Frisian I never learned the language good enough. I can understand it to a large degree though. And for the video, yes I seen it as well. I could understand old English, or his interpretation of it as well as the Frisian. I however have the advantage of knowing English and some Norwegian is actually quite handy to know for this as well.
One point at 6:15, I speak Swedish which has the word “Köpa” which means to buy, and is pronounced similarly to the English word to “shop”, and is even related to it! I would imagine that keapje is thus related to the modern English word “shop”.
This is such a gem. Thanks fot making this! I cringed so hard watching the documentary because of the lack of syntax knowledge
Very interesting. I had learned as a college freshman that Frisian most resembled English, but in the ensuing 50 years (!) I had never heard an example until now. Thank you! As a native US speaker of English, and a somewhat competent speaker of French, I've often thought that English speakers could learn French far more easily by relying on cognates and introducing a spoken intermediate "pig-French" before worrying about grammar and pronunciation.
Nothing hits me with more dopamine than learning the etymological history of english and its sister languages. It might truly be my favorite subject.
Language is neat. I'm a native speaker of English and German, with exposure to a wide variety of dialects and it's really cool how easy to understand Dutch, Afrikaans, and older languages are.
As Finnish and (basic-level) Swedish speaker, it's interesting to find out that many Friesian words are rather close to Swedish words, and also some have ended in Finnish as loan words. Like the Friesi word for "to understand" is phonetically quite close to Swedish cognate "förstor" (to understand, to 'get it'). And "keapje" (to buy) is rather close to swedish "köpa" (to buy) ...which has influenced the loan in Finnish; "kauppa" (a store/shop). But it also works as a noun in sentence "tehdä kauppaa" (to make businness, to buy and sell) so it's partly an all-situations word for "to buy/to sell/a shop"
As a Frisian who has learned Norwegian and Danish i notice many similarities, a bit more to Danish than Norwegian, but that would be expected as it is geographically closer to Friesland. Yes, we use "ferstean" for "understand", which in Danish is "forstå". Which of course looks very much like Swedish "förstor". I did not study Swedish, but i can read most because of it's similarities to Norwegian and Danish. Frisian "keapje" (to buy) is "kopen" in Dutch, which looks even more like Swedish "köpa". What's fun to me in learning other Germanic languages, is at first the languages seem/sound quite different from each other, but when you delve into them, you really begin to see how they are related and notice all kinds of similarities. One thing i found is the Frisian and also Dutch word for "afraid" is "bang", which is also used in Danish, but not in German and also not in Swedish and Norwegian. I wonder, what is the reason why the Danes, the Dutch and the Frisians use this same word with the same meaning, but the surrounding countries do not(?) Currently i'm learning Icelandic, which is probably the least changed Germanic language throughout the many centuries since the viking age (correct me if i'm wrong) and is supposed to be quite similar to Old-Norse (what the vikings spoke) and even with Icelandic i'm noticing how Icelandic connects to all other Germanic languages. Finnish, of course is no Germanic language itself, but does it have much Swedish influence?
While at the same time Estonian which is a Finno Ugric language also has loan words which come directly from Baltic German. In Estonian Kaubamayya is used for large shop or department store and comes from Baltic German. This would indicate to me the closeness of Swedish and German as we go further back. These loan words relating to business and trade reflect a common usage during the Hanseatic league.
Perhaps reflect a common usage .......
Very interesting! The word "keapje" sounds a bit like Polish "kupić", with the same meaning - "to buy". The similarity is perhaps even bigger when looking at the other forms of the verb, like the third person present singular "kupuje". I wonder if these words have some shared PIE root, or is it a case of a very early Germanic borrowing into Slavic (or the other way around)?
I believe the Germanic and Slavic are cognates rather than borrowings but it's indeed very interesting that these forms are so similar.
It's a borrowing from Latin as far as I know.
Å kjøpe - to buy, in Norwegian
"kaufen" in German, where a lot of the Ps from English and Dutch turned into F's - so definitely close :)
@@neilcook4686 and forstår du meg was so close too
This is so fun. Right up my alley. love this
Its interesting to see how the older languages give an indication of how modern idioms used in Scots and Scottish English might have formed. Like saying "that there cow" probably stems from these different cased prepositions.
I was thinking about the highland coos--how that pronunciation hasn't changed. But it's interesting that you mentioned "that there cow" because because that's something I would not be surprised to hear from someone who speaks with an older Appalachian dialect here in Tennessee. Of course, this whole area was settled by Scots and Irish immigrants, and supposedly our accent is the closest to Shakespearean English, before the British vowel shift. When I went to pubs to listen to traditional music in Ireland, it was the same as bluegrass here, minus a banjo.
My English colleagues showed me the video a few times. Me also being from glorious Fryslân
This is a really cool episode man!
As a swede I understood just about everything said here. For instance ferstiest in swedish is förstår, which also is for+stand. An other swedish word - förstånd - is understanding/reason/sanity. Keapje is köpa in swedish.
Swedish here too. I understand these too. 😁
Aside from the different dialects of Frisian languages, it’d probably be easier for Eddie and the farmer to understand each other if both languages were still in their old forms because the modern languages have diverged so much and been influenced by mostly different languages than each other.
It is funny how the languages are related and I as a (high)German with little understanding of low German can understand quite well watching on my screen, but if I was the unprepared farmer, it would have been a different situation. As a German you can get around in the Netherlands quite well if you speak carefully and slow, the dutch will adopt and basic things can be talked about. But when I had an accident over there and everyone involved, including the police, was aware of the situation that every word could bring you into trouble, I was not able to understand one word from them. Nobody was able or willing to speak either German or English with me..
Interesting for me as a native speaker of Frisian and Dutch. From studying Thai language, which has many borrowings from Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Khmer and various other languages, I learned that there are quite a few similarities between Frisian/Dutch and Pali/Sanskrit, e.g.: "ko" like the Frisian "ko" (cow), "tri" (in Thai pronounced as trai) like the Frisian "trije" (three), "tand" like the Dutch "tand" (tooth), "vayo" like Frisian "waaie" (wind), "dva" like the Frisian "twa" (two, also in Aita=non-duality), "vidya", pronounced "vitaya" from Sanskrit sounds like Frisian "witte" some dialects pronounced as "wite" (knowledge/know), the first part of "manussa" from Pali/Sanskrit sounds like Dutch "man" (man) (man comes from mano=mind and ussa=higher, so beings with a higher mind), etc.
I don't know if you know this, but English, Frisian, Sanskrit, and Pali are all descended from the same language: Proto-Indo-European. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-indo-european
@@wesleyrajpara6023 Thanks, yes I actually know this fact, that all of these languages stem from Proto-Indo European, but nevertheless I was quite surprised of finding actual examples in Thai, being it such a vastly different culture. And the Frisian/Dutch pronunciation is also more similar to those words than English, e.g. "man" not like the English "man" but sounds like the German Mann.
I wonder how easily the Frisian man would have been able to understand germanic Scots, I think broad Scots it is said to be the closest we have to old English in the UK.
One confusion I can think of is that in the Scots language, there's still the tendency to add -en to words in order to make them plural, whereas Frisian mostly uses the -s suffix for plural words. The languages have a good bit of similarity, which is to be expected since a great deal of the Scots language came from older forms of German. I'd be interested to see a Scots speaker and Frisian speaker attempt a conversation.
@@danielthompson6207 Doesnt Frisian use a lot of - en as well though, like Dutch? I know really correct Frisian uses - s as well, my girlfriend comes from another part of Fryslân and says "earms" instead of "earmen" when talking about the plural of the word "arm". When talking about feet we dont say "fuots" but say "fuotten" or another word entirely, skonken.
@@danielthompson6207The N-plurals in Scots are so extremely few in number that you can count them with your fingers. The -s plural is what Scots uses normally
Hello Hilbert. I really enjoyed this, as one of those funny dialect northerners, who learned German at school. It did remind me of the bit in Blackadder "Yes it is, not that it be" somewhat, but then I used to ask in English why they were making Shakespeare difficult by trying too hard to interpret it. I said this to an amateur actor at university and a couple of years later a Yorkshire accented bunch of actors started doing Shakespeare as I imagined. Oh well, as a comedian, Eddie seems to have turned "How now brown cow" into "pull de udder one".
I remember an old rhyme, probably not correct, but went something like, "Butter bread, eggs and cheese is both good English and good Fries."
Where did you hear that? It is very similar to a shibboleth, famously used by Grutte Pier. "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis - wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries"
@@GerbenH I just can't recall. I know it was quite a long time ago. It's just something that stuck in my head, and now every time I hear something about Frisian, it comes to mind. Maybe I got it from some notes in a Beowulf translation. That seems to tickle my memory.
@@GerbenH Ah, here's the wiki on the rhyme. I was off in my remembering. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language#:~:text=One%20rhyme%20that%20is%20sometimes,goed%20Ingelsk%20en%20goed%20Frysk%22.
@@GerbenH Folklore tab, second paragraph.
i love this channel and the frisian is a nice bonus
very interesting!! altough iI didnt learn much from it. I am Dutch myself i understand Frisian if it doesnt go to fast, and I know some old Englisch. Could you maybe do a video on Dutch low Saxon / old Saxon and how that relates to English sometime? That would be very interesting
Hi Marc, will have a video looking at a bit of Low German soon :)
@@historywithhilbert146 low German and low Saxon / old Saxon aren't directly related. old Saxon stems from Ingvaeonic like old Frisian, Anglic and Jutes. where low German including low Franconian, Dutch and other north and west German dialects stems from Istvaeonic
@@marcchef98 Low Saxon and Low German are synonyms, sometimes people include low Franconian in low German but that is incorrect. The dialects in north east Netherlands and north Germany are descended from the Old Saxon language. The dialect Tweants is westphalian and Gronings is very similar to east Frisian low Saxon dialects in Germany. The dialects in Germany and the Netherlands are 100% directly related.
@@wowfly6485 true, as someone who is born in the province of Groningen I can confirm that the dialect that I speak isn't that different from the dialect in the Eastern Frisia part in Germany.
as a german i understood frisian very very well, i know many dialects of german and it helped me with the vocabulary. frisian sounds like a german dialect to me lmfao
Appreciate these insights, watched the brown cow video only recently and thought this is a sort of amateurish interaction but all the same instructive. I did think at the time of watching he might have done as well using modern English
As an Austrian speaking English , High German and Salzburgian dialect I could understand 100% especialy the grammer from Frisian is some kind simmilar to the Salzburgian
That was really interesting, thanks.
This was a really impressive video
Fascinating video! Seeing these words in similar ways across multiple languages really brings the history home, its very beautiful to see and understand. I'm currently learning Dutch and its amazing just much English shares with it. 'I have an apple and a bread - Ik heb een appel en een brood'
Certainly! In Frisian we can see how quite a lot of the phonemes are even closer together: 'ik haw (pron: haf) in apel en in brea.'
Eddie is a real human.
fascinating video! nice analysis
Knowing both English and German, i understood all of that pretty well.
Another interesting idea would be a German speaker(preferably from southern Germany or Austria) and an English speaker together try to understand Low Saxon.
The way the farmer says "ja ja ja ja" so enthousiastically is so funny to me
Fascinating as always
It's amazing how mutually indelible modern Friesian and Dutch are to modern english.
Seeing people saying that “keapje” sounds like Polish and other languages, i'd like to add that “keapje” sounds and looks alot like the Faroese word “keypa”, which means buy or to buy.
They are cognates, like Russian "kupit'".
This was fascinating😃!
Thanks Bill, glad you enjoyed it!
I've never understood any Frisian until I saw the video you discussed. Thinking about it in terms of Old English made it a lot more comprehensible to me. I find that pretty weird. I'm not some Ye Olde Ænglisċ speaker, but I've learned how to recite the Lord's Prayer and read a few things, watched a few videos, and even with little tiny bit of knowledge of pronunciation and flow, thinking of Frisian in that light instead of in the light of modern English made it more comprehensible. Very odd how just setting your mind up to think in a particular pronunciation and speech flow can raise your ability to understand a language you don't speak. I shouldn't be surprised though. I don't speak Italian, but I understand more of it when I'm thinking in terms of Spanish (I am not fluent but I can have a conversation with someone in Spanish). Then again, I'm sure doing that makes me _mis_ understand too, since there are false friends between Italian and Spanish. Either way, languages are fun.
@Hilbert, you should really make a video about Luxembourgish. Technically it's a Moselle-Franconian dialect of German (though we don't like to acknowledge that) but having been part of the "greater Netherlands" for centuries I can't help but notice that our languages have a lot of things in common. Not only certain words or phrases, but even the sounds.
Kaufen/kopen/keapje/cheap. What detailed knowledge!
Hilbert is deep smart guy love his videos 💙💙💙🎆🫂🙏🍻🥂👍🎉🤗🙈🤗👏🐝🐝🐝
Thanks for sharing. Some of my ancestors were Frisian.
wow this Is very interesting and hope you will go on in making videos! 🤩 I can see, few connection only, with Italian: Mar (but) -> Ma ; Brunne -> Bruno / bruna ; wol (want) -> volere (infinitum). Few phrases were easy to understand (I do not know Old English). thank you 😊👍
That's because the Germanic and Latin/Romance languages (as we call them) have common roots in what is called Proto-Indo-European if you go far back enough.
really interesting👍🏼 as a german who also speaks english i can understand almost everything
From East Anglia, in southeastern England -- "Eggs, butter, and green cheese; is good English and good Frise."
I can understand as much in modern English as Eddie could in old English. Cheese, butter, milk, brown, cow haven’t changed much.
Proud to be Frysian ^-^
The meaning of Ferstiest is very interesting. It’s exactly the same in Swedish ”Förstår du mig” it also directly translated mean for stand you me
In Dutch we also use 'verstaan". In standard Dutch it sounds like "versta je mij?" and it means: "do you hear me / did you hear what I said to you". "Do you understand me" would be "begrijp je mij" However, in many south Dutch dialects "versta je mij" does mean "do you understand me"... F.ex. Brussels dialect: "verstodde ma?", West Flemish: "verstao je mi?" It's so very close to most of the Germanic languages and dialects! It's really mind blowing how this remains largely unknown to the Germanic speaking world. Of course, as Dutch speakers we are aware of the closeness of German but for me it is really due to the Scandinavian crime series(*) that a door was opened to the understanding that the Germanic languages still are simply a kind of continuum where the language barriers can easily be broken trough. (*) I fell from my chair a few times when hearing Norwegian or Swedish sentences that sounded exactly the same, word for word, as in Dutch. Danish is a whole different animal though, but I feel like it reads more easily than f.ex. Swedish, strangely enough ...
@@taiqidong9841 Big thanks for the information. We also have something that’s very close to “begrijp je mij” we would say “begriper du mig” which mens the same thing.
Ferstiest = firstān in Old High German, but because of all these Sound shifts German went through, it changed to verstehen, but it's pronounced a bit similar.
A couple of words did have 1-1 Old English to Frisian to buy = ceapian = keapje to understand = forstandan = ferstean
I have been to the UK as a child. I am a Wâldfrysk, in Scotland it could bring me places. Maar ik heb geen talenknobbel zoals jij.
Old English and old Frisian were definetely mutually inteligible,only some changes like old English used C and old Frisian K,or maybe they used J in old frisian and they reduced the N at the end of a word.