English & Its Closest Relatives, Part Two

So which modern languages are the closest relatives of English? Most linguists say Frisian is the closest relative; in fact, Frisian and English belong to a subgroup of West Germanic, created by linguists, called "Anglo-Frisian." Frisian is spoken along the North Sea coastal areas in northwestern Europe, which includes parts of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Southern Denmark once had a few thousand Frisian speakers, but the language there is now virtually extinct. Frisian is divided into three dialects (variations), which are limited in mutually intelligible. The largest Frisian dialect is West Frisian, spoken by 300,000-400,000 Frisians in the Netherlands. East Frisian has declined markedly, but Saterland Frisian, spoken by a couple thousand people in northern Germany, is a remnant of the dialect. There is also North Frisian, spoken by some 10,000 in northern Germany, including on the islands off of the North Sea coast.

Another very close relative is Low German, sometimes simply called, get this, "Saxon," or "Low Saxon." The very terms tell you the language is close to English. Low German is not really so much of a written language, in the sense of a "standard" version, rather it has a good many dialects. The dialect in the general area around Hamburg-Bremen-Kiel is located in the ancestral homeland of English, and indeed many words are still very similar to English. As mentioned in "Part One," the Saxons were a large Germanic tribe, only part of which participated in the invasion of Britain. The language of the Saxons who remained in northern Germany is called "Old Saxon" by linguists, and it later became what is termed "Low German." Low German spread across northern Germany, even far into northeastern Germany, to regions now belonging to Poland and Lithuania. The vast territory covered by Low German gave rise to numerous dialects, as the language was influenced and altered by interaction with other languages, like Polish, Lithuanian, and certainly High German. The language of Berlin was originally Low German, but as the city rose in importance in the German state of Prussia, standard German, based largely upon High German, moved into Berlin as the language of government. An interesting situation developed, as High German could not totally displace the Low German of the city's populace. Instead, High German prevailed for the most part, but with certain Low German words and even Low German pronunciation of some sounds remaining. This gave Berlin the unique dialect called "Berlinerisch."* Numbers are difficult to verify, but somewhere between three and five million Germans seem to speak Low German on a fairly regular basis, if not daily. Several million more have substantial knowledge of Low German, but not enough to be considered truly fluent.

In the final installment, more close relatives of English.

* Standard High German came to be taught in schools throughout much of the German speaking world to make communication easy. Previously, when regional dialects were commonly spoken (some still are regularly used among families and friends), a person from Hamburg (Low German) and a person from Vienna (High German), for example, would not easily have understood one another (that's putting it mildly). The use of High German as a standard eliminated this problem, although dialects are still quite common, and these dialects also influence how people speak standard German. 
   
WORD HISTORY:
Behold-The ultimate origins of this word are unclear, although some believe it to be Indo European. It goes back to the Old Germanic compound "bihaldanan," which meant "to keep, to retain, take hold of." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "behealdan," which had similar meanings, but also "keep in view, hold in view," an additional meaning seemingly peculiar to English. The participle form, "beholden," is still used with the meaning "be obligated to," from the sense "be held to an obligation." German has "behalten," which means "keep or retain, including in memory; that is, remember;" Low German Saxon has "behoolden," with the same meaning as standard German; Dutch has "behouden" (notice the "l" is gone), meaning "keep, maintain, preserve;" Danish and Norwegian have "beholde" meaning “to keep, hold on, retain." Apparently Frisian, Icelandic and Swedish do not use related forms of the compound "behold," at least in modern times, but they do have forms of "hold," and that will be the subject of a history very soon..