The Frisian languages are a closely related group of West Germanic languages, spoken by about 400,000 Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages. However, modern English and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, nor are Frisian languages intelligible among themselves, owing to independent linguistic innovations and foreign influences.
Frisian(s) most often refers to:
The Frisians are an ethnic group indigenous to the coastal regions of the Netherlands, north-western Germany and southern Denmark, and during the Early Middle Ages in the north-western coastal zone of Flanders, Belgium. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia.
Frisia is a cross-border cultural region in Northwestern Europe. Stretching along the Wadden Sea, it encompasses the north of the Netherlands and parts of northwestern Germany. Wider definitions of ‘Frisia’ may include the island of Rem and the other Danish Wadden Sea Islands. The region is traditionally inhabited by the Frisians, a West Germanic ethnic group.
Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian, but there are no known medieval texts from this area. The language of the earlier inhabitants of the region between the Zuiderzee and Ems River is attested in only a few personal names and place-names. Old Frisian evolved into Middle Frisian, spoken from the 16th to the 19th century.
North Frisian is a minority language of Germany, spoken by about 10,000 people in North Frisia. The language is part of the larger group of the West Germanic Frisian languages. The language comprises 10 dialects which are themselves divided into an insular and a mainland group.
Jonas Bronck was an immigrant to the Dutch colony of New Netherland after whom the Bronx River, and by extension, the county and New York City borough of the Bronx are named.
The Dutch are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common ancestral and cultural heritage and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Aruba, Suriname, Guyana, Curaçao, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States. The Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire, forming a part of their respective peripheries and the various territories of which they consisted had become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs, the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as the Dutch Republic. The high degree of urbanisation characteristic of Dutch society was attained at a relatively early date. During the Republic the first series of large-scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place.
In the United States, a patroon was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions of 1629, the Dutch West India Company first started to grant this title and land to some of its invested members. These inducements to foster colonization and settlement are the basis for the patroon system. By the end of the eighteenth century, virtually all of the American states had abolished primogeniture and entail; thus patroons and manors evolved into simply large estates subject to division and leases.
Dutch Americans are Americans of Dutch and Flemish descent whose ancestors came from the Low Countries in the distant past, or from the Netherlands as from 1830 when the Flemish became independent from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands by creating the Kingdom of Belgium. Dutch settlement in the Americas started in 1613 with New Amsterdam, which was exchanged with the English for Suriname at the Treaty of Breda (1667) and renamed New York City. The English split the Dutch colony of New Netherland into two pieces and named them New York and New Jersey. Further waves of immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.
North Frisia is the northernmost portion of Frisia, located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany between the rivers Eider and Wiedau. It also includes the North Frisian Islands and Heligoland. The region is traditionally inhabited by the North Frisians.
The Frisii were an ancient tribe, living in the low-lying region between the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and the River Ems, sharing some cultural and linguistic elements with the neighbouring Celts. The newly formed marshlands were largely uninhabitated until the 6th or 5th centuries BC, when inland settlers started to colonize the area. As sea levels rose and flooding risks increased, the inhabitants learned to build their houses on village mounds or terps. The way of life and material culture of the Frisii hardly distinguished itself from the customs of the Chaucian tribes living farther east. The latter, however, were considered to be part of the Germanic tribal confederation.
Frisia has changed dramatically over time, both through floods and through a change in identity. It is part of the Nordwestblock which is a hypothetical historic region linked by language and culture,where they may have spoken an Indo-European language which was neither germanic nor celtic.
The Frisian Kingdom, also known as Magna Frisia, is a modern name for the post-Roman Frisian realm in Western Europe in the period when it was at its largest (650–734). This dominion was ruled by kings and emerged in the mid-7th century and probably ended with the Battle of the Boarn in 734 when the Frisians were defeated by the Frankish Empire. It lay mainly in what is now the Netherlands and – according to some 19th century authors – extended from the Zwin near Bruges in Belgium to the Weser in Germany. The center of power was the city of Utrecht.
Jochem Pietersen Kuyter was an early colonist to New Netherland, and one of the first settlers of what would become Harlem on the island of Manhattan. He became an influential member of the community and served on the citizen boards known as the Twelve Men, the Eight Men and the Nine Men.
Nordic and Scandinavian Americans have constituted a long-running ethnic presence in New York City since its very founding.
Frisian nationalism refers to the nationalism which views Frisians as a nation with a shared culture. Frisian nationalism seeks to achieve greater levels of autonomy for Frisian people, and also supports the cultural unity of all Frisians regardless of modern-day territorial borders. The Frisians derive their name from the Frisii, an ancient Germanic tribe which inhabited the northern coastal areas in what today is the northern Netherlands, although historical research has indicated a lack of direct ethnic continuity between the ancient Frisii and later medieval 'Frisians' from whom modern Frisians descend. In the Middle Ages, these Frisians formed the Kingdom of Frisia and later the Frisian freedom confederation, before being subsumed by stronger foreign powers up to this day.
The Anglo-Saxon settlement in the Netherlands was a movement of continental Angles, Saxons, Franks and possibly English Anglo-Saxons into the lands formerly inhabited by the ancient Frisii, Cananefates and Batavians. These migrations occurred after the population drop of the Frisii during the 5th century up until the 7th century. These new migrants from northwestern Germany were later referred to as the Frisians by the Merovingian Franks who may have taken this name from older Roman historiography. During these migrations, almost the entire population of the coastal Netherlands was demographically replaced.
The Netherlands in the early Middle Ages was inhabited by various Germanic tribes, including the Frisians, who played a significant role in the development of the region and its Christianisation and eventual incorporation into the Frankish Empire.
