The German Question, Part Sixty

"Bismarck" Part Five/E "Bismarck as Chancellor & A Treaty With 'Contentious Relatives' ""Ethnic Minorities in Bismarckian Germany/"Northwest/Frisians"

Since the Polish areas of eastern Germany (prior to World War I) have been mentioned in some of the previous articles in this series, for those interested, "Anna Anderson," the woman who claimed to be "Anastasia," the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, was from that area. I did four articles on her. Here are the links, in sequence:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/07/we-all-love-mystery.html

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/07/some-additions-to-we-all-love-mystery.html

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/10/update-on-mystery.html

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2008/11/mystery-solved.html

The Frisians were an old Germanic tribe that settled along the northwest coastal areas of Europe (modern Netherlands, Germany, Denmark). Their language is close to English, and indeed they live in the same general area of the old Germanic tribes the Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes. These were the main Germanic elements which participated in the invasion of Briton, and historians believe that a fair number of Frisians were also counted among these invaders. Not all Saxons participated in the invasion, and their Germanic dialect, now referred to as "Low Saxon," or "Low German Saxon," flourished in that general northwest area of Europe, what is now the Netherlands and Germany. No question that over time, "Low German" (English, Frisian and Low German are all close relatives) made big inroads into the Frisian speaking population in the region. The 1900 census of Germany shows 20,600 Frisian speakers. How much that would have changed (downward) from Bismarck's time, I don't really know, but probably at least some. Not only was Frisian losing speakers to Low German, but by Bismarck's time, his promotion of standard German in schools would have made many Frisians bi-lingual, if not tri-lingual (Frisian, Low German, and standard German), and in somewhat rarer cases, multi-lingual (Frisian, Low German, standard German, and a dialect of Danish).* Today, Frisian, specifically "West" Frisian** is spoken in the Netherlands, adjacent to Germany, where there are approximately 350,000 (West) Frisian speakers.*** In Germany, our main concern in this article, "East" Frisian has been in decline for quite some time, and there are only about 2,000 remaining speakers of a dialect of East Frisian called "Saterland," in the German state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen, in German). "North" Frisian has about 10,000 speakers in the German state of "Schleswig-Holstein," where it is also spoken not only on the mainland, but on some German islands off the coast. In all cases, these East and North Frisian speakers also speak standard German, something that was undoubtedly not so true in Bismarck's time. The main thing about Bismarck and the Frisians is, he promoted the teaching of standard German in schools throughout the country, which gradually made Frisian and German dialects less and less important, although even today, Frisian is still used as an every day language by some in Germany, as are some German dialects, with standard German being used to communicate with German speakers from other areas.

(A Word History is below the notes)

* Low German speakers too were increasingly bi-lingual, being taught standard German in school. Today, Low German speakers have dwindled considerably, as standard German is used more and more. Low German has declined so much, that efforts have been made to promote the teaching of Low German in schools as a second language to keep it from further decline.

** Linguists break Frisian down into three dialects, "West," "East," and "North."

*** I am only using an approximation, and according to several sources, there are many more people of Frisian heritage in the Netherlands who understand West Frisian to varying degrees, but who are not considered fluent in the language, with some of these also being able to read and write some basic Frisian.

WORD HISTORY:
Schnell-This is one of the words frequently heard in movies or on TV when Germans, usually in a World War Two setting, are involved. You may be surprised to know that English has its own very similar word, although it is now archaic. I cannot find an Indo European root for this word, so I can only start with Old Germanic, which had "snellaz," meaning "quick, active." (There seems to have been a secondary meaning of "bold," and I found this additional meaning for both English and German.) This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "snel/snell," with the same basic meaning, and Old High German "snel," again with the same meaning. The word fell out of common usage in English at some point in the Middle Ages. The German word, eventually spelled "schnell," is still very much in use. In German, a "Schnellzug" is an "express train." Low German has "snell," Dutch has "snel." A form of the word was borrowed into some of the Latin-based languages from Frankish ''snel."