Bilingual sign in German and North Frisian, respectively, in
Husum, Germany |Native to||Netherlands, Germany|
|Region||Friesland, Groningen, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein|
|Native speakers||500,000 (date missing)| |Official language
in|| Netherlands |Regulated by||NL: Fryske Akademy D: no
official regulation unofficial: the Seelter Buund (for Sater
Frisian), the Nordfriisk Instituut (for North Frisian) The
Frisian /ˈfriːʒən/ languages are a closely related group of
Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 members of Frisian
ethnic groups, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea
in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the
second closest living languages to English, after Scots.
However, modern English and Frisian are mostly unintelligible to
each other. Frisian languages bear similarities to Low German,
Dutch (from which many Frisian words have been borrowed), and
Danish. Additional shared linguistic characteristics between the
Great Yarmouth area, Friesland, and Denmark are l