Wurster Frisian
The Wurster Frisian (also Wurtfriesisch , Wortfriesisch , Wurstfriesisch ) was a dialect of the East Frisian language , probably until the early 18th century in Wursten , north of Bremerhaven was spoken. It belonged to the Weser Frisian dialect group with the Harlinger Frisian and the Wangerooger Frisian . The last East Frisian dialect still in existence today, Sater Frisian , on the other hand, is an Ems Frisian dialect.
history
The land of Wursten did not belong to the original settlement area of the Frisians , but was finally colonized by them in the 8th century and later formed an independent state community. In the 15th century the East Frisian language began to die out and was gradually replaced by Lower Saxon dialects in the areas from the Lauwers to the Weser . In the Land of Wursten, however, the language lasted a little longer than in East Friesland and Groningerland .
At the end of the 17th century, the language was described in two lists of words, but by this time it had already been pushed back. In the first half of the 18th century, Frisian was probably finally extinct even in sausages.
Linguistic features
The Weser Frisian dialects of the East Frisian language had a peculiarity that is unique in the (non-Upper German) West Germanic languages: They received full vowels in adjacent syllables. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in Wurster Frisian, the easternmost of these dialects. In Old Frisian words with a short stem vowel, the word accent moved from the first to the second syllable. It could happen that not only was the full vowel retained in the now stressed adjacent syllable, but instead the old stem vowel was partially reduced to the point of complete cancellation. This is how words such as snuh ("son", from old French sunu ) and kma ("come", from old French coma ) arose .
The only surviving complete sentence in Wurster Frisian is: Kma wit hart ick will di wit tell ("Come here, I want to tell you something").
Substrate effect
In Low German dialect of the country Wursten there are still some Frisian today substrate words . In 1984 Nils Århammar gave the examples “Maon” ( hand and tension services ), “Bau (d) n” ( brake ), “Schuur / Schuulschotten” ( dragonfly ) and “jill'n” ( screaming, neighing ). However, nothing has been preserved from the phonological peculiarities of Wurtfriesian.
literature
- Bremer, Otto: "Wurstener dictionaries". Contributions to the history of German language and literature 13, 1888, pp. 530–566.
- Möllencamp, Rudolf: The Frisian language monuments of the country Wursten . Bremerhaven: Dizen & Co. 1968.