The unique features of Frisian languages

On 27 September 2019   /   News, Translations News   /   Leave a comment
The unique features of Frisian languages

Frisian is, in fact, a group of Germanic languages spoken by about 500 thousand people in the Netherlands and Germany. They are part of the Anglo-Frisian group but are not mutually intelligible with English. Depending on the location, Frisian languages have been influenced by Dutch, German and Danish. Division of Frisian languages West Frisian is the most common one. It is an official language of the Friesland province in the Netherlands but is spoken in several other places as well. Its insular varieties are often unintelligible on the mainland. North Frisian is a language of many inhabitants of the Nodrfriesland district in Germany and a few islands. It has several strongly dissimilar dialects. The third one is known as Saterland Frisian and is spoken in one place only, the municipality of Saterland. The terrain is surrounded by marshes, which helped to avoid strong pressures of the German language. Interesting facts

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Peculiarities of the Faroese language

On 27 August 2019   /   News, Translations News   /   Leave a comment
Peculiarities of the Faroese language

Faroese (pronounces as /?f??ro??i?z/ or /?f?ro??i?z/) is the mother tongue for over 70 thousand people, mostly concentrated on the Faroe Islands and Denmark. Just as Icelandic (see our entry), it is a Germanic language derived from Old Norse. A bit of history Old Norse was still the language on the Islands at the beginning of the 10th century. However, the influx of Irish, Orkney and Shetland settlers in the coming years began to affect the language. Even contemporary Faroese has a significant number of words that have a clear Celtic origin. At the end of 14th century, it stopped being a written language as a result of a union with Denmark. For almost 300 years, Faroese was used only in its spoken forms in arts and daily interactions. The first decades of 19th century brought a change as first publications with Faroese started to appear. The first one was the

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Interesting facts about?Icelandic!

On 7 August 2019   /   News   /   Leave a comment
Interesting facts about?Icelandic!

There are many interesting languages across the globe, but Icelandic stands out when it comes to languages spoken in Europe. Historically, it was the westernmost Indo-European language until the 14th century! It is still a rather mysterious language as well as culture. Let us take a look at some of the interesting facts about Icelandic! ?did you know? Icelandic is a North Germanic language, further categorised as Insular Nordic, closely related to Faroese. Even though it belongs to the same language family as German and English, it is probably the farthest German language from those two. It is spoken by over 300 000 persons inhabiting Iceland as well as several thousand in Denmark, USA and Canada. Nearly all citizens declare this language as their mother tongue. The Icelandic Language Day is celebrated on 16 November. It is also the birthday of a prominent poet and naturalist, Jónas Hallgrímsson. His actions contributed

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