Saterland Frisian language

From a diachronical perspective, Saterland Frisian is an Emsfrisian dialect of the East Frisian language. Emsfrisian used to be spoken in the western half of the East Frisian peninsula and in the Ommelanden. The other East Frisian dialect group was the Weserfrisian, formerly spoken from the eastern half of the East Frisian peninsula to beyond the Weser.

Together with West Frisian and North Frisian it belongs to the Frisian branch of the Germanic languages. The three Frisian languages evolved from Old Frisian. Among the living Frisian dialects, the one spoken in Heligoland (called Halunder) is the closest to Saterland Frisian.[3]^: 418 The closest language other than Frisian dialects is English.

Frisian and English used to be grouped together as Anglo-Frisian languages. Nowadays, English, Frisian and Lower German, sometimes including Dutch, are grouped together under the label North Sea Germanic. Low German, which is closely related to Saterland Frisian, lacks many North Sea Germanic features already from Old Saxon times on.[4] In turn, Saterland Frisian had prolonged close contact with Low German.[5]^: 32[6]

Settlers from East Frisia, which left their homelands around 1100 A.D. due to natural disasters, established the Frisian language in the Saterland. Since the sparse population at the time of their arrival spoke Old Saxon, the Frisian language of the settlers came into close contact with Low German.[5]^: 30-32

In East Frisia, the assimilation of Frisian speakers into the Low German speaking population was well under way in the early 16th century. The dialect of the Saterland persisted mostly due to geography: As the Saterland is surrounded by bogland, its inhabitants had few contacts with adjacent regions. The villages built on sandy hills were basically like islands. Until the 19th century, the settlement area was almost exclusively reachable by boat via the river Sagter Ems (Seelter Äi). The exception being walking on frozen or dried out bogland during times of extreme weather.[7][6]

Politically, the land did not belong to the County of East Frisia, which came into existence in the 15th century, but changed hands frequently until it became part of County of Oldenburg. The resulting border was not merely political, but also denominational, as the Saterland was recatholicized.[6] The Saterland was linguistically and culturally different from Oldenburg, too. This led to further isolation.

Colonialization of the bogland, the construction of roads and railways led to the Saterland being less isolated. Still, Saterfrisian managed, because most of the community living in the Saterland continued to use the language. This common linguistic area was disturbed following World War II. German repatriates from Eastern Europe were settled in the Saterland, leading to Standard German gradually replacing Saterfrisian. While the predicted language death in the late 20th century did not happen, and the number of speakers being stable, the Saterfrisian speaking community nowadays make up only a minority of those living in the Saterland.[8]^: 46[9]

A bilingual sign, with the second line showing the place name in Saterland Frisian

Today, estimates of the number of speakers vary slightly. Saterland Frisian is spoken by about 2,250 people, out of a total population in Saterland of some 10,000; an estimated 2,000 people speak the language well, slightly fewer than half of those being native speakers.[nb 1] The great majority of native speakers belong to the older generation; Saterland Frisian is thus a seriously endangered language. It might, however, no longer be moribund, as several reports suggest that the number of speakers is rising among the younger generation, some of whom raise their children in Saterlandic.

Map of Saterland with names in Sater Frisian

The phonology of Saterland Frisian is regarded as very conservative linguistically, as the entire East Frisian language group was conservative with regards to Old Frisian.[17] The following tables are based on studies by Marron C. Fort.[3]^{: 411–412}[8]^: 64–65

Vowels

Chart of Saterland Frisian monophthongs, from [18]

Chart of Saterland Frisian diphthongs, from [18]

The Saterlfrisian language preserved some lexical peculiarities of East Frisian, such as the verb reke replacing the equivalent of German: geben in all contexts (e.g. Daach rakt et Ljude, doo deer baale …,[20] German: Doch gibt es Leute, die da sprechen; 'Yet there are people, who speak') or kwede ('to say') compare English 'quoth'. In Old Frisian, quetha and sedza existed (Augustinus seith ande queth …,[21] 'Augustinus said and said'). Another word, common in earlier forms of Western Germanic, but survived only in East Frisian is Soaks meaning 'knife' (comp. Seax).

Saterland Frisian became a written language relatively recently. German orthography cannot adequately represent the vowel rich Frisian language. Until the mid-20th century, scholars researching it developed their own orthography. The poet Gesina Lechte-Siemer, who published poems in Saterfrisian since the 1930s, adopted a proposal by the cultural historian Julius Bröring.[22]

In the 1950s Jelle Brouwer, professor in Groningen, an orthography based on the Dutch one, which failed to gain widespread acceptance. The West Frisian Pyt Kramer, who did research in Saterfrisian, developed a phonemic orthography.[23] The American linguist Marron Curtis Fort used Brouwer's Dutch-based orthography as a basis for his own proposal.[24] The most notable difference between the two orthographies is the way long vowels are represented. Kramer proposes that long vowels always be spelled with a double vowels (baale 'to speak'), while Fort maintains, that long vowels in open syllables be spelled with a single vowels, as Frisian vowels in open syllables are always long (bale 'to speak'). Both proposals use almost no diacritics, apart from Fort's use of acutes to differentiate long vowels from semi-long ones.

So far, no standard has evolved. Those projects tutored by Kramer use his orthography while Fort published his works in his orthography, which is also recognized by the German authorities. Others use a compromise.[25] This lack of standards leads to the village Scharrel being spelled Schäddel on its town sign instead of the currently used Skäddel.

Nordwest-Zeitung, a German-language regional daily newspaper based in Oldenburg, Germany, publishes occasional articles in Saterland Frisian. The articles are also made available on the newspaper's Internet page, under the headline Seeltersk.

As of 2004, the regional radio station Ems-Vechte-Welle broadcasts a 2-hour program in Saterland Frisian and Low German entitled Middeeges.[6] The program is aired every other Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The first hour of the program is usually reserved for Saterland Frisian. The program usually consists of interviews about local issues between music. The station can be streamed live though the station's Internet page.

Below is a snippet of the New Testament in Saterland Frisian, published in 2000 and translated by Marron Curtis Fort:[24]

The Lord's Prayer:[24]

A preview of the first stanza of the Saterlied (Seelter Läid), which is considered to be the regional anthem of Saterland:[5]

• Fort, Marron C. (1980): Saterfriesisches Wörterbuch. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
• Fort, Marron C. (2001) Das Saterfrisische. In Munske, Horst Haider (ed.), Handbuch des Friesischen, 409–422. Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton
• Kramer, Pyt (1982): Kute Seelter Sproakleere - Kurze Grammatik des Saterfriesischen. Rhauderfehn: Ostendorp.
• Peters, Jörg (2017). "Saterland Frisian". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 49 (2): 223–230. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000226. S2CID 232348873.
• Slofstra, Bouke; Hoekstra, Eric (2022). Sprachlehre des Saterfriesischen (PDF). Fryske Akademy.
• Stellmacher, Dieter (1998): Das Saterland und das Saterländische. Oldenburg.

Saterland Frisian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Frisia
• Frisian Islands
• Frisian languages
• Frisians
• Saterland Frisians

• Saterfriesisches Wörterbuch (German)
• Näie Seelter Siede
• Seeltersk Kontoor (German)
• Seelter Buund