Eiderstedt Frisian

The Eiderstedt Frisian was a dialect of the North Frisian language that was spoken on the Eiderstedt peninsula on Schleswig's west coast until the beginning / middle of the 18th century .

The Eiderstedt Frisian goes back to Frisian immigrants around the year 800 who settled at the mouth of the Eider and on the higher parts of Eiderstedt. It is possible that the Frisian immigrants mixed here with a remainder of the pre-Frisian population. Later the Eiderstedter marshes were also settled. It was the southernmost North Frisian dialect. In the early modern period, the Eiderstedter Frisian was finally replaced by Low German like the neighboring Strander Frisian as part of a language change . The Eiderstedt chronicler Peter Sax noted in 1636: "The Frisian language is still left [...]". In 1752 the geographer Anton Friedrich Büsching reported that Frisian was spoken in Eiderstedt. But as early as 1770 Johannes Nikolaus Tetens reported : “The current Eyderstedt people are a mixed people. The old tribe is Frisian, but there are so many foreign travelers from Holland, and otherwise grafted into them, that it is no longer recognizable. the Frisian language has completely left the country […] ”. In contrast to the northern Harden, Eiderstedt was economically strong and prosperous and in many respects had oriented itself towards the areas adjoining the south, which were characterized by Low German. Low German had also been the language of administration since the end of the Middle Ages. In the 16th century there was also a strong Dutch immigration. Frisian persisted longest in the west of the peninsula.

The Eiderstedter Frisian can be assigned to the island Frisian dialect group within North Frisian, which goes back to the first wave of immigration around 800, while the mainland Frisian dialects are based on a later second wave of immigration. However, characteristics of mainland North Frisian can also be demonstrated. The Eiderstedter Frisian can be understood today mainly through place names and individual relic names in legal writings of the late Middle Ages. Otherwise there are no literary sources. In a legal regulation from 1426, individual terms can be assigned to the Eiderstedt Frisian, sebbe ( kinship ) and boyne ( killer , old Frisian : bona ) can be mentioned as examples .

literature

• Dietrich Hofmann : To the Eiderstedter Frisian. In: Niederdeutsche Mitteilungen 14. pp. 59–68.
• Nils Århammar : North Frisian in language contact (including North Frisian lexicology). In: Horst Haider Munske (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Frisian / Handbook of Frisian Studies. Tübingen 2001, ISBN 978-3-484-73048-9 , p. 328 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ove Rugby: Low German on a Frisian substrate (=  Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis-Studia Germanistica Upsaliensia ). Alquist & Wiksells, Uppsala 1967, p. 19 .
2. ↑ Quotes from: Ove Rugby: Low German on Frisian substrate. Uppsala 1967.
3. ^ Society for Schleswig-Holstein History: The Netherlands and the West Coast of Schleswig-Holstein. ( Memento from January 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Ove Rugby: Low German on a Frisian substrate (=  Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis-Studia Germanistica Upsaliensia ). Alquist & Wiksells, Uppsala 1967, p. 19 below .
5. ^ Ove Rugby: Low German on a Frisian substrate (=  Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis-Studia Germanistica Upsaliensia ). Alquist & Wiksells, Uppsala 1967, p. 242 .