Anglo-Frisian languages


The Anglo-Frisian languages are the West Germanic languages which include Anglic and Frisian varieties.
The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinct from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, Anglo-Frisian brightening, and palatalization of :
The early Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon were spoken by intercommunicating populations, which led to shared linguistic traits through assimilation. English and Frisian have a proximal ancestral form in common before their divergence. Geography isolated the settlers of Great Britain from Continental Europe, except from contact with communities capable of open water navigation. This resulted in Old Norse and Norman language influences on Modern English, whereas Modern Frisian was subject to contact with the southernly Germanic populations, restricted to the continent.

Classification

The Anglo-Frisian family tree is:
Anglic, also known as Insular Germanic or English, is a group of linguistic varieties that includes Old English and all the varieties descended from it. These include Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English; Early Scots, Middle Scots, and Modern Scots; and the now extinct Yola and Fingallian in Ireland.
English-based creole languages are not generally included, as mainly only their lexicon and not necessarily their grammar, phonology, etc. comes from Modern and Early Modern English.

Frisian languages

The Frisian languages are a group of languages spoken by about 500,000 Frisian people on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. West Frisian, by far the most spoken of the three, is an official language in the Dutch province of Friesland and on two of the West Frisian Islands. North Frisian is spoken in the northernmost German district of Nordfriesland, in North Frisia, and on some North Frisian Islands. The East Frisian language is spoken in Saterland in Germany.

Anglo-Frisian developments

The following is a summary of the major sound changes affecting vowels in chronological order. For additional detail, see Phonological history of Old English.
  1. Backing and nasalization of West Germanic a and ā before a nasal consonant
  2. Loss of n before a spirant, resulting in lengthening and nasalization of preceding vowel
  3. Single form for present and preterite plurals
  4. A-fronting: West Germanic a, ā → æ, ǣ, even in the diphthongs ai and au
  5. palatalization of Proto-Germanic and before front vowels
  6. A-restoration: æ, ǣ → a, ā under the influence of neighboring consonants
  7. Second fronting: OE dialects and Frisian ǣ → ē
  8. A-restoration: a restored before a back vowel in the following syllable ; Frisian æu → au → Old Frisian ā/a
  9. OE breaking; in West Saxon palatal diphthongization follows
  10. i-mutation followed by syncope; Old Frisian breaking follows
  11. Phonemicization of palatals and assibilation, followed by second fronting in parts of West Mercia
  12. Smoothing and back mutation

    Comparisons

Numbers in Anglo-Frisian languages

These are the words for the numbers one to 12 in the Anglo-Frisian languages, with Dutch and German included for comparison:
Language123456789101112
Englishonetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve
Scotsane
ae*
yin		twathreefowerfivesaxseivenaichtnineteneleiventwal
Yolaoantwyedhreevourveevezeesezevenayghtneendhen
West Frisianientwatrijefjouwerfiifseissânachtnjoggentsienalvetolve
Saterland Frisianaantwäi
twäin
twoo		träifjauwerfieuwsäkssoogenoachtenjugentjoonalwentweelich
North Frisian iinj
ån		tou
tuu		trii
tra		fjouerfiiwseekssoowenoochtnüügentiinalwentweelwen
Dutcheentweedrieviervijfzeszevenachtnegentienelftwaalf
Germaneinszweidreivierfünfsechssiebenachtneunzehnelfzwölf

* Ae, is an adjectival form used before nouns.

Words in English, Scots, West Frisian, Dutch, and German

Alternative grouping

, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that encompasses Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon.
It is not thought of as a monolithic proto-language, but rather as a group of closely related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative unison.
The grouping was first proposed in Nordgermanen und Alemannen by the German linguist and philologist Friedrich Maurer, as an alternative to the strict tree diagrams which had become popular following the work of the 19th-century linguist August Schleicher and which assumed the existence of an Anglo-Frisian group.