If you speak English, you can travel to the Netherlands or Germany and likely fumble your way through a basic conversation. You might recognize German words like Haus (house) or Dutch words like Boek (book). But there is another language, tucked away on the edges of the North Sea, that feels far more intimately familiar. It is a language where “butter, bread, and green cheese” sounds almost exactly the same as it does in English.
That language is Frisian.
While often overshadowed by its larger neighbors, Dutch and German, Frisian holds a special place in the history of language. It is widely considered by linguists to be the closest living relative to English. To understand why, we have to look past modern borders and dig into the “genetic” history of the West Germanic language family.
The Anglo-Frisian Bond
To understand the connection, we have to rewind about 1,500 years. During the early Middle Ages, various Germanic tribes resided along the North Sea coast. When the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sailed across the water to settle in Britain (eventually becoming the Anglo-Saxons), the Frisians stayed behind on the continent.
Despite the geographic separation, the languages spoken by the Anglo-Saxons and the Frisians remained remarkably similar for centuries. Linguists group these two together under the massive West Germanic umbrella as the Anglo-Frisian branch. While German and Dutch evolved in their own directions, English and Frisian shared specific sound changes and grammatical simplifications that distinctively mark them as siblings.
Think of the language family like this: if German is English’s cousin, Frisian is its brother.
Vocabulary: The “Butter, Bread, and Green Cheese” Test
Legend has it that medieval Frisian pirate Pier Gerlofs Donia used a specific rhyme as a shibboleth to distinguish friends from foes. He would ask suspected enemies to repeat a phrase; if they sounded Dutch, they were overboard. The phrase highlights just how close the languages are:
Frisian: “Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.”
English: “Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Frisian.”
When spoken aloud, the resemblance is uncanny. Beyond this rhyme, the everyday vocabulary of Frisian reveals the deep connection. Here are a few examples comparing West Frisian, English, Dutch, and German to illustrate the proximity:
- English: Dream / Frisian: Dream / Dutch: Droom / German: Traum
- English: Key / Frisian: Kaai / Dutch: Sleutel / German: Schlüssel
- English: Sweet / Frisian: Swiet / Dutch: Zoet / German: Süß
- English: Rain / Frisian: Rein / Dutch: Regen / German: Regen
Notice how often the Dutch and German examples retain different consonants or vowels, while English and Frisian align almost perfectly.
The Linguistic DNA: The Nasal Spirant Law
While vocabulary similarities are fun, linguists look for systematic sound changes to prove relationships. The strongest piece of evidence linking English and Frisian is something called the Ingvaeonic Nasal Spirant Law.
That sounds terrifyingly technical, but the concept is actually quite simple. In the ancestor of Germanic languages, many words contained a vowel followed by a nasal sound (like n) and a fricative (like f, s, or th). German and Dutch generally kept that “n” sound. However, in the Anglo-Frisian branch, speakers stopped pronouncing the “n” and instead lengthened the vowel before it.
Once you see the pattern, you cannot unsee it:
1. The “Us” vs. “Uns” Split
- German: Uns
- Dutch: Ons
- Old English: Ūs (Modern: Us)
- West Frisian: Ús
2. The “Goose” vs. “Gans” Split
- German: Gans
- Dutch: Gans
- English: Goose
- West Frisian: Goes
3. The “Mouth” vs. “Mund” Split
- German: Mund
- Old English: Mūþ (Modern: Mouth)
- West Frisian: Mûle
This systematic dropping of the nasal sound is the “DNA test” that proves English and Frisian are siblings. It shows they underwent the same linguistic evolution at the same time, separating them from the rest of the Germanic pack.
Palatalization: From K to Ch
Another shared trait is palatalization, which is a fancy way of saying that hard “K” sounds often softened into “Ch” (in English) or “Ts/J” (in Frisian) sounds when they appeared before certain vowels. German and Dutch typically kept the hard “K”.
For example, take the word for a place of worship:
- German: Kirche (Hard K)
- Dutch: Kerk (Hard K)
- English: Church (Soft Ch)
- West Frisian: Tsjerke (Soft Tsj)
Or the product made from milk:
- German: Käse
- Dutch: Kaas
- English: Cheese
- West Frisian: Tsiis
English went slightly further with the “ch” sound, and Frisian leaned toward a “ts” or “dz” sound, but both moved away from the hard stops found in their continental cousins.
Where is Frisian Spoken Today?
If you want to hear this language in the wild, you have three main options, as “Frisian” is actually a cluster of three dialect groups:
- West Frisian (Frysk): By far the largest group, spoken by roughly 400,000 to 500,000 people in the province of Friesland in the northern Netherlands. This is the language most people refer to when they say “Frisian.”
- North Frisian: Spoken along the coast of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and on islands like Sylt and Föhr. It is highly fragmented into different dialects.
- Saterland Frisian: The last remnant of East Frisian, spoken by a very small population (perhaps 2,000 people) in the municipality of Saterland, Germany.
Despite the encroachment of Dutch and German, West Frisian remains vibrant. It is used in schools, local government, and media. In facts, signs in Friesland are often bilingual, listing the Frisian names for towns alongside the Dutch ones.
Can a Native English Speaker Understand Frisian?
Given all these similarities, can you just walk into a bar in Leeuwarden and start chatting in English while they reply in Frisian?
Not exactly. While the roots are the same, 1,000 years of separation have taken their toll. English was heavily influenced by Old Norse (thanks to the Vikings) and French (thanks to the Normans). Meanwhile, Frisian has been heavily influenced by Dutch.
If you listen to a modern Frisian conversation, it will likely sound like a mix of Dutch and gibberish to untrained English ears. However, famous British comedian Eddie Izzard once visited Friesland towards the end of a television series on language to test the theory. He attempted to buy a brown cow using only Old English words. The result? He was understood. The Frisian farmer understood “brown cow”, “what is his name”, and other basic phrases.
When you strip away the French loanwords from English (using “freedom” instead of “liberty”, or “sweat” instead of “perspiration”) and stick to the Germanic core, the intelligibility between English and Frisian skyrockets.
The Echo of the Past
Learning about Frisian is like looking into a mirror that reflects what English might have become if the Norman Conquest had never happened. It is a linguistic time capsule, preserving the sounds of the North Sea coast from a millennium ago.
For native English speakers, Frisian serves as a reminder that English is not an isolated entity but part of a vibrant family tree. So, the next time you ask for “butter and bread”, remember that just across the water, a Frisian is asking for “bûter en brea”—and you are speaking the language of siblings.