Frisian: English's Closest Cousin

College Students like to procrastinate. Whether they watch Netflix or go out with friends most students tend to have a favorite means of procrastinating. For me, my favorite way to procrastinate is through educational youtube videos. One of my favorite channels used for this purpose is LangFocus, a channel which focuses on linguistics by exploring what makes certain languages different, and what brings certain languages together. This week, LangFocus released a video about the Frisian language. What is the Frisian language? Frisian is spoken predominately in Northern parts of the Netherlands (although there are dialects of Frisian spoken in parts of Germany and Denmark if my prior knowledge serves me right). Frisian is best known for its relationship to English, with it being the closest relative to English (aside from Scots which has its language status disputed). 

Like German and Dutch, both Frisian and English are examples of West Germanic Languages, meaning that these four languages all share a common ancestor language making them all very closely related; that being said, Frisian and English diverged from one another more recently than most languages in the family, with written Frisian and written English sharing some clear similarities.  For example, LangFocus uses the phrase "Sy hat dit jier fyftjin boeken lezen" or in English "She has read fifteen books this year." The similarities are clear: "Sy" and "She", "fyftjin" and "fifteen", "jier" and "year". That being said, there are some clear differences in word order from this passage compared to English. A key difference, however, is that Frisian maintains two grammatical genders (neuter and common) whereas English lost grammatical gender at some point during the transition between Old and Middle English. 

English has also changed a lot since diverging from Frisian. English underwent a long period of contact with speakers of Old Norse through the Viking Age, and following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, English integrated a lot of French vocabulary into its own.

Despite the differences between the two, Frisian is still considered to be the easiest language for native English speakers to learn, easier than other closely related languages like Afrikaans, German, or Dutch, or languages from which English has borrowed a lot of vocabulary such as French. 

Frisian is also a language in decline. Since the birth of the Netherlands, Frisian has been losing favor to Dutch as the language of government, education, and communication even in the parts of the Netherlands in which it has historically been spoken. It is, like too many minority languages across the world, in decline. It is important for the linguistic and human diversity of this planet that we try to preserve minority languages, like Frisian not just for the sake of those native speakers who love their language, but also because of what minority languages can teach us about ourselves and each other. 

No hablo español // Je ne parle pas français // Ich spreche kein deutsch

Anyone who is a college student today has heard of PewDiePie. Odds are, you’ve probably watched his videos before, maybe you were a fan once, maybe you still are a fan, but regardless, most young people today know him as a larger than life internet celebrity from Sweden who became famous for his Youtube videos about video games. The interesting thing about Pewdiepie is that, despite recording all of his videos exclusively in English, English is not his first language, it’s Swedish. Born and raised in Sweden, Pewdiepie did what all good Swedish children do and went to school where he learned all the most important elements to a child's education in Sweden: Math, Science, History, and English.
 In Sweden, English proficiency is a reality of the school system. All Swedish students are expected to study English from a very young age, and as a result, adult Swedes speak English remarkably well, with 86% of Swedes being proficient in English. This trend is present across European countries, not just Sweden. In the Netherlands, 90% of the population is proficient in English, in Denmark 86% of people speak English, in Austria 73%, in Belgium 60%. In Europe, more and more people are learning to speak English, presenting English as an ever more important language on the world stage. But even in parts of Europe where English isn’t widely taught in schools, schools still teach children to be proficient in other languages, most notably in parts of Central and Eastern Europe where German is taught in most schools and German proficiency is fairly high.
 Meanwhile, only 20% of people in the United States, and 38% of people in the United Kingdom are bilingual; in Canada, a nation which is officially bilingual, only 19.3% of Canadians are bilingual (most of whom speak French natively and English as a second). This demonstrates a serious problem persistent across the English-speaking world, the issue being that English speakers don’t seem to learn languages very well. Why? Honestly, we have no excuse: the United Kingdom has been a part of the EU since the 1970s, and has a history of being in close contact with Europe and the various languages across that continent, Canadians share a country with French speakers, and the United States is one of the biggest recipients of immigrants in the world. What I believe it comes down to is the privilege that native English speakers have by being born speaking English, the new world language for the media, science, business, and politics. English speaking countries are not motivated to teach foreign languages to their children because English is already so prestigious: why should I learn French or Spanish or German if all I need to conduct business, to become a successful scientist, or to even study abroad is English. English speakers don't learn German, or French, or Dutch, or Spanish because most German, or French, or Dutch, or Spanish speakers any English speaker might interact with probably already speak English.
But, in my mind, this shouldn’t excuse native English speakers from learning foreign languages. Americans should make learning new languages a bigger priority by making schools teach foreign languages from a much younger age. Like in the rest of the world, English speaking children should go to school and learn a foreign language rather than waiting until Middle or High School. We should put more money into our schools language programs to higher better language teachers and buy better course materials. Maybe if we as a society focus more attention on learning languages, we can learn to better appreciate the world and its people.

Russia: A Fading Linguistic Gold Mine

Last night, like most nights, I spent some time watching Youtube, when I stumbled upon an interesting video about Russia and its internal (federal) organization. The video explored the system of federal districts which Russia consists of known as 'Oblasts'. Each Oblast functions similarly to how a state would within the United States, as each Oblast has its own set of specialized laws, and rules but is still subject to the Russian Federal Government. With Russia being as diverse as it is, it should come as no surprise that these individual oblasts often consist of their own unique cultures or ethnicities and as a result often have their own regional languages.

Although every Oblast is required to have Russian as an official language, they are allowed to have their own official languages as well, such as a variety of Turkic, Mongolic, or Uralic Languages or languages more familiar to us in the West like Ukranian. I found this to be very interesting, as it suggests something about how Russia works that is often overlooked. Russia is huge, it consists of various different minority groups with over 100 languages being spoken in Russia, and it is rare that such a diverse population of people can all co-exist in a single country. This makes Russia special, and I believe that its system of Oblasts could help accommodate for such coexistence. Because linguistic minorities are allowed to speak in peace, this also suggests cultural and religious tolerance from the Russian Government. 

In fact, as I learned in Russian History last semester, Russia has a long history of allowing minority groups to self govern, and the Russian state was never very interested in forcing people to live, speak, or think a certain way (with the brief exception being parts of the Soviet Period). In this way, I suppose Russia and the United States are similar in that our societies have acquired the framework that minority groups should be free to celebrate their differences from the majority, and of course, speak their own language. But just as is the case in the United States, a lot of minority groups in Russia have the problem of bleeding their local language and culture over time.

There are a lot of languages under threat of extinction within Russia. This is largely due to the fact that a lot of Russian Oblasts consist of a lot of different minority groups, many of which are too small to qualify for their language to receive co-official status within the Oblast. Additionally, the Russian Language was heavily emphasized in schools during parts of the Soviet Period, meaning that regional languages are often spoken by older people and have not been successfully passed on to the younger generation. Most languages under threat in Russia are from the far North-East of Russia where local people live in small isolated populations. Local languages in this part of Russia, as well as across the country, are losing popularity to Russian which is seen as the language of prestige and is used as the Lingua Franca across Russia. Sadly, this trend has existed for decades now and the Russian Government demonstrates no clear desire to fix the issue. 

Language death is a sad thing, and when it occurs it often happens parallel to the death of local cultures and customs. As a person, it is important to oppose the death of different cultures, customs, and languages because it is these differences amongst people that truly make humanity so interesting.