Old Frisian language

Only a few personal names and geographical names testify to the language of the settlers of the region between Zuiderze and Ems of the period of late antiquity ( Frisians , known from the works of Pliny and Tacitus ) ^[1] . Even then, Pliny, in his classification of Germanic tribes, united the Frisians into one group with the Angles and Saxons , which he called the common name of the Ingveons; ^[2] this fact in the 20th century triggered the emergence of the theory of Ingveonian languages .

In the early Middle Ages, Frisia extended from the environs of Bruges in modern Belgium to the shores of the Weser in northern Germany . The tribes who migrated to England from present-day northern Germany and Denmark during the 5th century came from the same region and spoke approximately the same language as the population of medieval Frisia; This fact explains the high degree of proximity of Old Frisian and Old English . ^[3]

At that time, the Frisian language was spoken on the entire southern coast of the North Sea . This region was called Great Frisia ( lat. Magna Frisia ), and many of its areas still preserve the Frisian heritage. However, by 1300 its borders had rolled back to Zuidersee (now IJsselmeer ), and the Frisian language on the coast was preserved only as a substrate . ^[four]

In the VIII century, apparently due to wars with the Franks and Viking raids, part of the Frisians migrated to the north and settled on the island of Helgoland and the North Frisian Islands . ^[5] The second wave of migration occurred around 1100 and led to the settlement of the continental coast adjacent to the North Frisian Islands. Some of the immigrants moved eastward and settled near Oldenburg. ^[2] So two more centers of the Frisian language and culture appeared.

In general, the Old Frisian language is phonetically very similar to the Old English. In particular, he is characterized by the palatalization of posterior consonants , characteristic of Old English. For example, while the closely related Old Saxon and Old Dutch retained the posterolinguistic form of dag, in Old Frisian it was transformed into dei, and in Old English - in dæġ [dæj] . The Pragerman [k] before the vowels turned into [tʃ] , using the example of the word church : in Old Frisian - tzirke or tzerke , in Old English - ċiriċe [ˈtʃiritʃe] , while in Old Saxon and Old Dutch - an un -palatalized form of kirika . Another common feature is Anglo-Frisian enlightenment, which translates a to e under certain circumstances. In unstressed syllables, o goes into a , and i into e , as in Old English.

The Old German diphthongs * ai and * au turned into Old Frisian ē / ā and ā, respectively, as for example in the words ēn / ān ("one") from the Pragerman * ainaz , and brād from * braudą ("bread"). In comparison, these diphthongs turned into ā and ēa ( ān and brēad ) in Old English, and in ē and ō ( ēn and brōd ) in Old Saxon. The diphthong * eu in most cases turned into ia , and the ancient Germanic * iu remained. These diphthongs initially began with a syllabic (percussion) i , but the emphasis later shifted to the second vowel, resulting in iā and iū . For example, thiād (“people”) and liūde from Pragerman * þeudō and * liudīz .

As a rule, the h between the vowels has disappeared ( sian from * sehwanaN ), as in Old English and Old Dutch. On the other hand, h- at the beginning of the word is preserved. Old Frisian kept th in all cases longer than Old Dutch and Old Saxon, showing the gradual spread of the transition from th to d from south to north, starting from southern Germany in the 9th century as part of the Second movement of consonants , but not affecting the Frisian language until the 13th or 14th centuries.

In the Old Frisian language, the declensions are preserved:

The earliest known examples of Old Frisian writing are several copies of runic inscriptions from the period before the 9th century in a very early form of the language. These runic letters, however, consist of no more than one inscription of one or more words. ^{[2] [4]}

The first examples of the classical Old Frisian language - incoherent words in the Latin context - belong to the period from the 9th century. The Old Frisian language is attested in a number of extant manuscripts belonging to the period from the 12th to the 13th centuries, but most of them are from the 14th to the 15th centuries. As a rule, these are texts of mainly legal content. A characteristic feature of the Old Frisian legal texts was that almost all of them represent the processing of material that arose in different regions and at different times. In the dictionary of texts of that time there are a lot of borrowings, in their syntax the undoubted influence of Latin is noticeable. Other monuments of this period — diplomatic acts, cadastral registers, court records, etc. — reflect a specific Uzus, use a special spelling and a number of peculiar linguistic forms. Their spelling is very arbitrary and inconsistent. The texts are very common cliches and expressions that are not found in other ancient Frisian monuments. ^[2] The following is a list of documents in Old Frisian language in chronological order:

• first Broker's manuscript (B1), between 1276 and 1300
• first Rüstring manuscript (R1), circa 1300
• second Rüstring manuscript (R2), 1327
• second Broker's manuscript (B2), 1345
• The first manuscript from Hongsingo (H1), 1325–1350
• second manuscript from Hongsingo (H2), 1325–1350
• first manuscript from Emsingo (E1), circa 1400
• manuscript from Fivelgo (F), between 1427 and 1450
• third manuscript from Emsingo (E3), circa 1450
• second manuscript from Emsingo (E2), a little later than 1450
• Processus Judicii (E4), 1457
• Jus Municipale Frisonum (J), 1464
• Codex Unia (U), 1477
• Codex Roorda (Ro), 1480-1485
• Codex Parisiensis (P), 1483-1500
• Freeska Landriucht (D), circa 1485
• Codex Aysma (A), circa 1500
• Codex Furmerius (Fs), circa 1600

Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (present-day North Friesland) also spoke Old Frisian, but written sources of the time in this area have not yet been found. Also, not a single document was preserved in Old Frisian from the area between Scheldt and Vli . ^[four]