1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Northwestern Europe
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Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is the loosely defined northwestern region of Europe. The phrase is defined geographically and ethnographically. Geographically, Northwestern Europe usually consists of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, northern France, southern Germany, and Switzerland are also often considered part of the grouping. Austria is also defined as Northwestern Europe, though less frequently. Southern France is not regarded as northwestern, and it is geographically and culturally considered part of the Mediterranean region or Southern Europe. Due to its geographically eastern position and unique status as a Finnic language country, the term is helpful when discussing issues of climate or biology. The region also has a history of Protestantism that differentiates it from its Mediterranean / Southern European / Latin and Eastern European / Slavic neighbors. In military history, especially in Commonwealth countries, the battle honour North-West Europe has been used to refer to the two campaigns in that approximate area during World War II. Two separate battle honours were awarded to regiments who took part in these campaigns, the North-West Europe Campaign of 1940, during the Battle of France, was restricted to Belgium and the French Channel ports. In the First campaign the French Army was responsible for the rest of the Western Front from Luxembourg to Switzerland, as were the American 12th Army and 6th Army Groups during the second campaign. A period of warfare existed from 1 November 1944 to 8 February 1945 during which time the First Canadian Army manned positions in the Nijmegen Salient
3.
Stateless nation
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Stateless nation is a political term for ethnic/national minority that does not possess its own state and is not the majority population in any nation state. The term implies that the group should have such a state, members of stateless ethnic groups may be citizens/nationals of the country in which they live, or they may be denied citizenship by that country. Stateless nations are not represented as a nation in international sports such as FIFA. Nations without state are classified as fourth world nations, stateless nations either are dispersed across a number of states or form the native population of a province within a larger state. Some ethnic groups were once a nation that later became a nation state. Stateless nations can have large population, for example, the Tamil people are one of the largest stateless nation with a population of more than 70 million. Tamils speak Tamil, a language belonging to the Dravidian languages, although there are more than 200 million Dravidian speakers in South Asia, there is no sovereign state in South Asia with a Dravidian majority. As not all states are states, there are a number of ethnic groups who live in a multinational state without being considered stateless nations. The symbiotic relation between nations and states arose in early modern Western Europe and it was exported to the rest of the world through colonial rule, only a small fraction of the worlds national groups have associated nation-states. The proportion was estimated to be 3 percent by Minahan, the rest are distributed in one or more states. Of the 192 member states of the United Nations in 2006, thus nation-states are not as common as often assumed, and stateless nations are the overwhelming majority of nations in the world. Some nations have been victims of carve out and their homeland was divided among several countries, even today the colonial boundaries form modern national boundaries. These often differ from cultural boundaries and this results in situations where people of the same language or culture are divided by national borders, for example New Guinea splits as West Papua and Papua New Guinea. During decolonization, the colonial powers imposed a state structure irrespective of the ethnic differences. This led states with many minority groups in the successor states. Some of these minority groups have campaigned for self-determination, because of the ethnic differences in some countries, problems such as discrimination, ethnic conflict, separatism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, forced assimilation, and partition have occurred. Most peoples have their own history, language, culture, religion and customs, a nation can exist without a state, as is exemplified by the stateless nations. Citizenship is not always the nationality of a person, nationalism is often connected to separatism, because a nation achieves completeness through its independence
4.
Frisians
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The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands, Germany and the southern tip of Southern Jutland in Denmark. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia. The Frisian languages are spoken by more than 500,000 people. The ancient Frisii enter recorded history in the Roman account of Drususs 12 BC war against the Rhine Germans and they occasionally appear in the accounts of Roman wars against the Germanic tribes of the region, up to and including the Revolt of the Batavi around 70 AD. Frisian mercenaries were hired to assist the Roman invasion of Britain in the capacity of cavalry and they are not mentioned again until c. 296, when they were deported into Roman territory as laeti, from the 3rd through the 5th centuries Frisia suffered marine transgressions that made most of the land uninhabitable, aggravated by a change to a cooler and wetter climate. Whatever population may have remained dropped dramatically, and the lands remained largely unpopulated for the next two centuries. When conditions improved, Frisia received an influx of new settlers, mostly Angles and these people would eventually be referred to as Frisians, though they were not necessarily descended from the ancient Frisii. It is these new Frisians who are largely the ancestors of the medieval, by the end of the 6th century, Frisian territory had expanded westward to the North Sea coast and, in the 7th century, southward down to Dorestad. This farthest extent of Frisian territory is referred to as Frisia Magna. Early Frisia was ruled by a High King, with the earliest reference to a Frisian King being dated 678 and these wars benefited attempts by Anglo-Irish missionaries to convert the Frisian populace to Christianity, in which Saint Willibrord largely succeeded. The eastern periphery of Frisia would become part of various German states, an old tradition existed in the region of exploitation of peatlands. As both the Anglo-Saxons of England and the early Frisians were formed from largely identical tribal confederacies, Old Frisian is the most closely related language to Old English and the modern Frisian dialects are in turn the closest related languages to contemporary English. Of these three languages both Saterland Frisian and North Frisian are endangered, West Frisian is spoken by around 354,000 native speakers and is not threatened. Today there exists a division of the Frisians, into North Frisians, East Frisians and West Frisians. The West Frisians in general do not see themselves as part of a group of Frisians. Therefore, the term Frisian, when applied to the speakers of all three Frisian languages, is a linguistic and to some extent cultural concept, not a political one. Because of centuries of cohabitation and active participation in Dutch society, as well as being bilingual, talking ethnicity on the middle ground, Ton Derks, Nico Roymans, Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity, The Role of Power and Tradition, 207-218
5.
Independence
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Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory. The opposite of independence is a dependent territory, Independence does not necessarily mean freedom. Whether the attainment of independence is different from revolution has long been contested, nation-states have been granted independence without any revolutionary acts. The Russian October Revolution, for example, was not intended to seek national independence, however, the American Revolutionary War was intended to achieve independence from the beginning. Causes for a country or province wishing to seek independence are many, the means can extend from peaceful demonstrations, like in the case of the Indian independence movement, to a violent civil war. Autonomy refers to a kind of independence which has been granted by an authority that itself still retains ultimate authority over that territory. A protectorate refers to a region that depends upon a larger government for its protection as an autonomous region. Declaring independence and attaining it however, are quite different, a well-known successful example is the U. S. Declaration of Independence issued in 1776, the dates of established independence, are typically celebrated as a national holiday known as an independence day
6.
Population
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A population is the number of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding. In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans, Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of human populations. This article refers mainly to human population, in population genetics a sexual population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members can breed together. This means that they can regularly exchange gametes to produce normally-fertile offspring and this also implies that all members belong to the same species. If the gamodeme is very large, and all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, however, there may be low frequencies of exchange with these neighbours. This may be viewed as the breaking up of a sexual population into smaller overlapping sexual populations. The overall rise in homozygosity is quantified by the inbreeding coefficient, note that all homozygotes are increased in frequency – both the deleterious and the desirable. The mean phenotype of the collection is lower than that of the panmictic original – which is known as inbreeding depression. It is most important to note, however, that some lines will be superior to the panmictic original, while some will be about the same. The probabilities of each can be estimated from those binomial equations, in plant and animal breeding, procedures have been developed which deliberately utilise the effects of dispersion. It can be shown that dispersion-assisted selection leads to the greatest genetic advance and this is so for both allogamous and autogamous gamodemes. In ecology, the population of a species in a certain area can be estimated using the Lincoln Index. As of todays date, the population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 7.496 billion. The US Census Bureau estimates the 7 billion number was surpassed on 12 March 2012, according to papers published by the United States Census Bureau, the world population hit 6.5 billion on 24 February 2006. The United Nations Population Fund designated 12 October 1999 as the day on which world population reached 6 billion. This was about 12 years after world population reached 5 billion in 1987, the population of countries such as Nigeria, is not even known to the nearest million, so there is a considerable margin of error in such estimates. Researcher Carl Haub calculated that a total of over 100 billion people have probably been born in the last 2000 years, Population growth increased significantly as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace from 1700 onwards. In 2007 the United Nations Population Division projected that the population will likely surpass 10 billion in 2055
7.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
8.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
9.
Population density
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume, it is a quantity of type number density. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and most of the time to humans and it is a key geographical term. Population density is population divided by land area or water volume. Low densities may cause a vortex and lead to further reduced fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it, commonly this may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world. The worlds population is around 7,000,000,000, therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,000,000,000 ÷510,000,000 =13.7 per km2. If only the Earths land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account and this includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is also excluded, then population density rises to over 50 people per km2, thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates, cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo, for instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, and the surrounding suburbs excluded. Arithmetic density, The total number of people / area of land, physiological density, The total population / area of arable land. Agricultural density, The total rural population / area of arable land, residential density, The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land. Urban density, The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land, ecological optimum, The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources. S. States by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density
10.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
11.
West Frisian language
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West Frisian, or simply Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages, the name West Frisian is only used outside the Netherlands, to distinguish this language from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian spoken in Germany. Most speakers of West Frisian live in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, Friesland has 643,000 inhabitants, of whom 94% can understand spoken Frisian, 74% can speak Frisian, 75% can read Frisian, and 27% can write it. For over half of the inhabitants of the province of Friesland, 55%, also, many Frisians have left their province in the last sixty years for more prosperous parts of the Netherlands. In addition, there is a Frisian diaspora abroad, with Friesland having sent, in relative terms, the largest concentrations of Frisian speakers outside the Netherlands are located in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Apart from the use of Frisian as a first language, it is spoken as a second language by about 120,000 people in the province of Friesland. One part of Friesland, Stellingwerf in the south-east, does not speak Frisian, the least-used dialect of West Frisian is Skiermûntseagersk, the island dialect of Schiermonnikoog, which is actually on the verge of extinction, because it is spoken by no more than 50–100 people. The Amelansk dialect is spoken on the island Ameland and is the only Frisian variety that does not devoice final obstruants, Hindeloopen Frisian, the archaic Frisian dialect of the peninsular harbour town of Hindeloopen on the west coast, is still spoken by some 300 people at the most. Skylgersk and Aastersk are the dialects of the western and eastern parts of the island of Terschelling and have about 800 and 400 speakers respectively and they are separated from each other by the Dutch dialect of Midslands, which is spoken in the central part of Terschelling. Because of their insular nature these four less-used dialects are also those that have deviated the most from mainstream Frisian, in fact, three of the four widely used mainland dialects are so much alike that a non-Frisian could probably not make out any differences. The Noardhoeksk dialect is spoken in the eastern corner of the province. By far the two most widely spoken West Frisian dialects are Clay Frisian and Wood Frisian, both these names are derived from the Frisian landscape. In the western and north-western parts of the province, the region where Clay Frisian is spoken, the dialect spoken in the eastern area is thus called Wood Frisian. Although Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk are mutually very easily intelligible, there are, at least to native Frisian speakers and these include the pronunciation of the words my, dy, hy, sy, wy and by, and the diphthongs ei and aai. In the early Middle Ages the Frisian lands stretched from the area around Bruges, in what is now Belgium, to the river Weser, at that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. Old Frisian bore a similarity to Old English. This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingvaeonic sound shift, which affected Frisian and English, both English and Frisian are marked by the suppression of the Germanic nasal in a word like us, soft or goose, see Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law. Also, when followed by some vowels the Germanic k developed into a ch sound, for example, the Frisian for cheese and church is tsiis and tsjerke, whereas in Dutch it is kaas and kerk
12.
North Frisian language
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North Frisian is a minority language of Germany, spoken by about 10,000 people in North Frisia. The language is part of the group of the West Germanic Frisian languages. The language comprises 10 dialects which are divided into an insular. North Frisian is closely related to the Saterland Frisian language of Northwest Germany, all of these are also closely related to the English language forming the Anglo-Frisian group. The phonological system of the North Frisian dialects is strongly being influenced by Standard German and is adapting to that of the German language. With a number of native speakers probably even less than 10,000 and decreasing use in mainland North Frisia and it is protected as a minority language and has become an official language in the Nordfriesland district and on Heligoland island. Together these three form the group of Frisian languages. The English language is closely related to Frisian. The two languages are classified in a common Anglo-Frisian group, Anglo-Frisian is grouped among the Ingvaeonic languages together with Low German. The related Low German has developed differently since Old Saxon times and has lost many Ingvaeonic characteristics, the North Frisian dialects can be grouped into two main dialectal divisions, those of the mainland and the insular dialects. All in all these two groups comprise 10 dialects, the dialect spoken on the Halligen is one of the mainland dialects though. Typically one distinguishes between the ten dialects that have been spoken since the beginning of Frisian linguistic studies in the 19th century. The islands of Sylt, Föhr and Amrum were colonised around 800 while the mainland was settled by Frisians in AD1100, add to this the various influences of neighbouring languages on the dialects. The sentence displayed below in many variants reads, Shine, old moon, cried Häwelmann, but the moon was nowhere to be seen and the stars neither, they had all already gone to bed. Insular Sölring „Ljucht, ual Muun, ljucht. ”Skriilt Häwelmann, man di Muun wiar narigen tö sen en uk di Stiaren ek, rep Heewelmaan, man a muun wiar nochhuaren tu sen an a stäären uk ei, jo wiar al altermaal tu baad gingen. Rüp Heäwelman, oawers de Muun wear naarni tu sin’n en uk de Steern ni, dja wear al allemoal tu Baad gingen. Mainland Northern Goesharde Frisian, Hoorninger Fräisch variety of Langenhorn „Jocht, uule moune, jocht. ”Biilked Hääwelmoon, ors e moune waas närngs to schüns än da steere ok ai, ja weern al aal to beede gingen. Wiedingharde Frisian „Ljocht, uuile moone, ljocht. ”Biilked Hääwelmuon, män e moone was näärgen to schüns än uk e steere ai, jä würn al altomoale to beerd gingen
13.
Low German
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Low German or Low Saxon is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is descended from Old Saxon in its earliest form, as an Ingvaeonic language, Low German is quite distinct from the Irminonic languages like Standard German. It is closely related to Anglo-Frisian group of languages and more distantly to Dutch and this difference resulted from the High German consonant shift, with the Uerdingen and Benrath lines being two notable linguistic borders. Dialects of Low German are widely spoken in the area of the Netherlands and are written there with an orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography. Small portions of northern Hesse and northern Thuringia are traditionally Low Saxon-speaking too, historically, Low German was also spoken in formerly German parts of Poland as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia. Under the name Low Saxon, there are speakers in the Dutch north-eastern provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Stellingwerf, Overijssel, German speakers in this area fled the Red Army or were forcibly expelled after the border changes at the end of World War II. Today, there are still speakers outside Germany and the Netherlands to be found in the areas of present-day Poland. In some of these countries, the language is part of the Mennonite religion, there are Mennonite communities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Minnesota which use Low German in their religious services and communities. The type of Low German spoken in communities and in the Midwest region of the United States has diverged since emigration. The survival of the language is tenuous in many places and has died out in places where assimilation has occurred. Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, Belize, and Chihuahua, Mexico have made Low German a co-official language of the community, in Germany, native speakers of Low German call it Platt, Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch. In the Netherlands, native speakers refer to their language as dialect, plat, nedersaksies, or the name of their village, officially, Low German is called Niederdeutsch by the German authorities and Nedersaksisch by the Dutch authorities. Plattdeutsch/Niederdeutsch and Platduits/Nedersaksisch are seen in texts from the German. In Danish it is called Plattysk, Nedertysk or, rarely, Mennonite Low German is called Plautdietsch. Etymologically Platt meant clear in the sense of a language the people could understand. In Dutch, the word Plat can also mean improper, or rude, the ISO 639-2 language code for Low German has been nds since May 2000. The question of whether Low German should be considered a separate language, linguistics offers no simple, generally accepted criterion to decide this question. Scholarly arguments have been put forward in favour of classifying Low German as a German dialect, as said, these arguments are not linguistic but rather socio-political and build mainly around the fact that Low German has no official standard form or use in sophisticated media
14.
Friso-Saxon dialects
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Friso-Saxon is a collective name for a group of West Germanic dialects found around the North Sea coast. Although they are forms of Low German/Low Saxon, these dialects have experienced strong influence from the Frisian languages, most of the Friso-Saxon dialects were historically Frisian dialects, until Frisian was replaced with Low Saxon in the Late Middle Ages. However, Frisian has remained a substratum since then in the regions concerned, the only exception to this rule is Stellingwarfs, a Low Saxon dialect which has undergone influence especially from West Frisian
15.
Dutch language
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It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after English and German. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them, Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the official name for Dutch is Nederlands, and its dialects have their own names, e. g. Hollands, West-Vlaams. The use of the word Vlaams to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands, the Dutch language has been known under a variety of names. It derived from the Old Germanic word theudisk, one of the first names used for the non-Romance languages of Western Europe. It literarily means the language of the people, that is. The term was used as opposed to Latin, the language of writing. In the first text in which it is found, dating from 784, later, theudisca appeared also in the Oaths of Strasbourg to refer to the Germanic portion of the oath. This led inevitably to confusion since similar terms referred to different languages, owing to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch. A notable exception is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a West Central German variety called Deitsch by its speakers, Jersey Dutch, on the other hand, as spoken until the 1950s in New Jersey, is a Dutch-based creole. In Dutch itself, Diets went out of common use - although Platdiets is still used for the transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian Low Dietsch dialects in northeast Belgium, Nederlands, the official Dutch word for Dutch, did not become firmly established until the 19th century. This designation had been in use as far back as the end of the 15th century, one of them was it reflected a distinction with Hoogduits, High Dutch, meaning the language spoken in Germany. The Hoog was later dropped, and thus, Duits narrowed down in meaning to refer to the German language. g, in English, too, Netherlandic is regarded as a more accurate term for the Dutch language, but is hardly ever used. Old Dutch branched off more or less around the same time Old English, Old High German, Old Frisian and Old Saxon did. During that period, it forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, on the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in nowadays France and Germany. The division in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, one of the few moments linguists can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age, the Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups, East, West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period, Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German and High German
16.
West Frisian Dutch
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The West Frisian dialect is a Dutch dialect spoken in the contemporary West Friesland region, Wieringen, Wieringermeer, the coastal area from Den Helder to Castricum, and the island of Texel. It is a Hollandic Dutch dialect but is influenced by Frisian and it is not to be confused with the language of the Friesland Province internationally indicated with the name West Frisian language although they are related to each other. The smaller regions and villages, such as Zijpe, Andijk, slightly more different from the rest of the group is Derps, the dialect of the village Egmond aan Zee. The dialect descends from a form of the Hollandic dialect. Only about 7 to 9% of the people speak the dialect or a mixture of strong. The light dialect is more widely spoken but it is also slowly beginning to become lighter. Since the 1970s there has been more interest in reading and writing the dialect, low Franconian languages Languages of the Netherlands
17.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
18.
Danish language
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There are also minor Danish-speaking communities in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their home language. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of printing, a language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect. It spread through use in the system and administration though German. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though there are variants of the standard language. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative, Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong and weak conjugations and inflections, nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. As in English, Danish only has remnants of a case system, particularly in the pronouns. Its syntax is V2, with the verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch, other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language, Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where there are no sharp dividing lines between the different vernacular languages. Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas, West Danish, Insular Danish, and East Danish. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish, both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each others languages. By the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language was called the Danish tongue, or Norse language. Norse was written in the alphabet, first with the elder futhark. From the 7th century the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway
19.
Religion
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Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has considered a source of religious beliefs. There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, about 84% of the worlds population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. With the onset of the modernisation of and the revolution in the western world. The religiously unaffiliated demographic include those who do not identify with any religion, atheists. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs, about 16% of the worlds population is religiously unaffiliated. The study of religion encompasses a variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possible interpretation traced to Cicero, connects lego read, i. e. re with lego in the sense of choose, go over again or consider carefully. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders, we hear of the religion of the Golden Fleece, of a knight of the religion of Avys. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was understood as a virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice. In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations and it was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first emerged. Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, what is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Some languages have words that can be translated as religion, but they may use them in a different way. For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. There is no equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities
20.
Protestantism
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Protestantism is a form of Christianity which originated with the Reformation, a movement against what its followers considered to be errors in the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the three divisions of Christendom, together with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks from or attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Protestants reject the notion of papal supremacy and deny the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but disagree among themselves regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Five solae summarize the reformers basic differences in theological beliefs, in the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, and Iceland. Reformed churches were founded in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by such reformers as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, the political separation of the Church of England from Rome under King Henry VIII brought England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement. Protestants developed their own culture, which made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, some Protestant denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of families, Adventism, Anglicanism, Baptist churches, Reformed churches, Lutheranism, Methodism. Nondenominational, evangelical, charismatic, independent and other churches are on the rise, and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, the edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. During the Reformation, the term was used outside of the German politics. The word evangelical, which refers to the gospel, was more widely used for those involved in the religious movement. Nowadays, this word is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions in Europe, above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the EKD. In continental Europe, an Evangelical is either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, the German word evangelisch means Protestant, and is different from the German evangelikal, which refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word evangelical usually refers to Evangelical Protestant churches, and it traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States. Protestantism as a term is now used in contradistinction to the other major Christian traditions, i. e. Roman Catholicism. Initially, Protestant became a term to mean any adherent to the Reformation movement in Germany and was taken up by Lutherans. Even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ, French and Swiss Protestants preferred the word reformed, which became a popular, neutral and alternative name for Calvinists
21.
North Sea
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The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and it is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of around 570,000 square kilometres. The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery, the North Sea was the centre of the Vikings rise. Subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and thus the access to the markets, as Germanys only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars. The coast of the North Sea presents a diversity of geological and geographical features, in the north, deep fjords and sheer cliffs mark the Norwegian and Scottish coastlines, whereas in the south it consists primarily of sandy beaches and wide mudflats. Due to the population, heavy industrialization, and intense use of the sea and area surrounding it. In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean, in the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively. In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of 570,000 square kilometres and a volume of 54,000 cubic kilometres. Around the edges of the North Sea are sizeable islands and archipelagos, including Shetland, Orkney, the North Sea receives freshwater from a number of European continental watersheds, as well as the British Isles. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea, the largest and most important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Elbe and the Rhine – Meuse watershed. Around 185 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers discharging into the North Sea encompassing some highly industrialized areas, for the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres. The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to a north of Bergen. It is between 20 and 30 kilometres wide and has a depth of 725 metres. The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris and this feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea. The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with uniform depth in fathoms. These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate, the Devils Hole lies 200 miles east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres long,1 and 2 kilometres wide and up to 230 metres deep. Other areas which are less deep are Cleaver Bank, Fisher Bank, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the North Sea as follows, On the Southwest
22.
Friesland
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Friesland or Frisia is a province in the northwest of the Netherlands. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of North Holland, in 2010, the province had a population of 646,000 and a total area of 5,749 km2. The capital and seat of the government is the city of Leeuwarden. Since 2017, Arno Brok is the Kings Commissioner in the province, a coalition of the Labour Party, the Christian Democratic Appeal, and the Frisian National Party forms the executive branch. The province is divided into 24 municipalities, the area of the province was once part of the ancient, larger region of Frisia. The official languages of Friesland are West Lauwers Frisian and Dutch, a proto-Frisian culture slowly began to emerge around 400–200 BC known for its artificial dwelling hills as a defence against the sea. The Roman claim on Frisia began in 12 BC with the campaign of Nero Claudius Drusus in Germania, after a series of costly battles against the Frisians, the Romans were suddenly sworn fealty. The de facto independence they later enjoyed as a Roman vassal shows that this might have been a mostly diplomatic decision based on the temporary favourable bargaining position. Together with other Germanic tribes such as the Salians and the Batavii they managed to keep the north of the Lower Rhine mostly free from Roman influence. The early eighth-century AD is known for the Frisian Kingdom, king Redbad, after incorporation into the Frankish empire, Friesland was divided into three parts. The westernmost part developed at the start of the second millennium into the County of Holland, while the remainder of Frisia had no feudal overlord and that ended when Charles V added Frisia to the Habsburg Netherlands as Lordship of Frisia. Under Napoleon, the department was named Frise, after Napoleon was defeated in 1813, the department became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as the province of Friesland. Friesland is the largest province of the Netherlands if one includes areas of water, in terms of land area only, the provinces highest point is at 45 metres above sea level, on the island of Vlieland. There are four parks, Schiermonnikoog, De Alde Feanen, Lauwersmeer. The ten urban areas in Friesland with the largest population are, The province is divided into 24 municipalities, the province of Friesland has an oceanic climate. In 2010, Friesland had a population of 646,305, the years 1880–1900 show slower population growth due to a farm crisis in which 20,000 Frisians emigrated to the United States of America. Since the late Middle Ages, Friesland has been renowned for the height of its inhabitants. Friesland is mainly an agricultural province, the black and white Frisian cattle, black and white Stabyhoun and the black Frisian horse originated here
23.
Homeland
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A homeland is the concept of the place with which an ethnic group holds a long history and a deep cultural association – the country in which a particular national identity began. As a common noun, homeland, it connotes the country of ones origin. When used as a noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages. A homeland may also be referred to as a fatherland, a motherland, or a country, depending on the culture. Motherland refers to a country, i. e. the place of ones birth, the place of ones ancestors. People often refer to Mother Russia as a personification of the Russian nation, within the British Empire, many natives in the colonies came to think of Britain as the mother country of one, large nation. India is often personified as Bharat Mata, Fatherland is the nation of ones fathers or forefathers. It can be viewed as a nationalist concept, insofar as it relates to nations, the term fatherland is used throughout German-speaking Europe, as well as in Dutch. For example, Wien Neêrlands Bloed, national anthem of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1932, makes extensive and conspicuous use of the parallel Dutch word. Because of the use of Vaterland in Nazi-German war propaganda, the term Fatherland in English has become associated with domestic British and this is not the case in Germany itself, where the word remains used in the usual patriotic contexts. In Romance languages, a way to refer to ones home country is Patria/Pátria/Patrie which has the same connotation as Fatherland, that is. As patria has feminine gender, it is used in expressions related to ones mother. The Soviet Union created homelands for some minorities in the 1920s, including the Volga German ASSR, in the case of the Volga German ASSR, these homelands were later abolished and their inhabitants deported to either Siberia or the Kazakh SSR. In the case of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast this was not necessary, since it had created from the start at the far-Eastern end of Siberia. In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security was created soon after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks, Homeland isnt really an American word, its not something we used to say or say now. In the apartheid era in South Africa, the concept was given a different meaning, the white government had designated approximately 25% of its non-desert territory for black tribal settlement. Whites and other non-blacks were restricted from owning land or settling in those areas, after 1948 they were gradually granted an increasing level of home-rule. From 1976 several of these regions were granted independence, four of them were declared independent nations by South Africa, but were unrecognized as independent countries by any other nation besides each other and South Africa
24.
Frisian languages
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The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages, the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group. However, modern English and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, nor are Frisian languages intelligible among themselves, due to indepedent linguistic innovations, the three Frisian languages have been heavily influenced by and bear similarities to Dutch, Low German and/or Danish, depending upon their location. There are three varieties of Frisian, West Frisian, Saterland Frisian, and North Frisian, West Frisian is strongly influenced by Dutch, and, similar to Dutch, is described as being between English and German. The other Frisian varieties, meanwhile, have influenced by German, Low German. The North Frisian language especially is further segmented into several strongly diverse dialects, stadsfries is not Frisian, but a Dutch dialect influenced by Frisian. Frisian is called Frysk in West Frisian, Fräisk in Saterland Frisian, and Frasch, Fresk, Freesk and this local language is now, in turn, being replaced by standard Dutch. An increasing number of native Dutch speakers in the province are learning Frisian as a second language, in the North Frisia region of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, there were 10,000 North Frisian speakers in the 1970s. Although many of live on the mainland, most are found on the islands, notably Sylt, Föhr, Amrum. The local corresponding North Frisian dialects are still in use, as a regional language in the Netherlands, Frisian is only spoken by a certain demographic, specifically rural, lower-class people in contrast with the Dutch speaking upper-class. Speakers who had Frisian as their first language often maintained the Frisian system of no homophony when speaking Frisian, speakers of the many dialects of Frisian may also be found in the United States and Canada. Saterland and North Frisian are officially recognised and protected as minority languages in Germany, ISO 639-1 code fy and ISO 639-2 code fry were assigned to Frisian, but that was changed in November 2005 to Western Frisian. According to the ISO639 Registration Authority the previous usage of code has been for Western Frisian, the new ISO639 code stq is used for the Saterland Frisian language, a variety of Eastern Frisian. The new ISO639 code frr is used for the North Frisian language variants spoken in parts of Schleswig-Holstein, the Ried fan de Fryske Beweging is an organization which works for the preservation of the Frisian language and culture in the Dutch province of Friesland. The Fryske Academy also plays a role, since its foundation in 1938, to conduct research on Frisian language, history. Recent attempts have allowed Frisian be used more in some of the domains of education, media. Nevertheless, Saterland Frisian and most dialects of North Frisian are seriously endangered, moreover, Frisian runs the risk of dissolving into Dutch, especially in Friesland, where both languages are used. In the Early Middle Ages the Frisian lands stretched from the area around Bruges, in what is now Belgium, to the river Weser, at that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. Old Frisian, however, was similar to Old English
25.
Scots language
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Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was restricted to most of the Highlands. The language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity, although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a linguistic continuum. Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish. In the 2011 Scottish census, a question on Scots language ability was featured, native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots or use a dialect name such as the Doric, or the Buchan Claik. The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Northern Ireland, the term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands, is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form. Scots in Ireland is known in circles as Ulster-Scots or Ullans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis, the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English Scottisc, before the end of the 15th century, English speech in Scotland was known as English, whereas Scottish referred to Gaelic. From 1495 the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse, meaning Irish, the Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic. Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century and it remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the language of the Scottish court. Scots also includes loan words resulting from contact with Gaelic, Early medieval legal documents include a body of Gaelic legal and administrative loans. Contemporary Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh, loch, from the thirteenth century Early Scots spread further into Scotland via the burghs, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the century. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England, from 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, settled there. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one, Modern Scots is used to describe the language after 1700 when southern Modern English was generally adopted as the literary language though Scots remained the vernacular. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, the Northern Isles, Caithness, Arran, in Ulster it is spoken in the Counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry and Donegal. Dialects include Insular Scots, Northern Scots, Central Scots, Southern Scots, many speakers are either diglossic and/or able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation in which they find themselves
26.
Anglo-Frisian languages
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The Anglo-Frisian languages is the group of West Germanic languages that includes Anglic and Frisian. For additional detail, see Phonological history of Old English, ingvaeonic, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that comprises Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon. It is not thought of as a monolithic proto-language, but rather as a group of related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative unison. High German languages Low Franconian languages Friedrich Maurer, Nordgermanen und Alemannen, Studien zur Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde,244 p. in German with English summary, Verlag Inspiration Un Ltd. Ringe, Donald R. and Taylor, Ann, the Development of Old English - A Linguistic History of English, vol
27.
Dutch Low Saxon
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Dutch Low Saxon are the Low Saxon dialects that are spoken in the northeastern Netherlands. The rest of the Netherlands speaks Dutch, Frisian or Low Franconian languages and they do not form a coherent language family. The classification of Dutch Low Saxon is not unanimous, from a diachronic point of view, the Dutch Low Saxon dialects are merely the West Low German dialects native to areas in the Netherlands, as opposed to areas beyond the national border with Germany. Some Dutch Low Saxon dialects like Tweants show features of Westphalian, from a strictly synchronic point of view, however, some linguists classify Dutch Low Saxon as a variety of Dutch. Also, as a matter, Dutch Low Saxon, since the 17th century, has been influenced by Standard Dutch. Recent studies have, however, shown that mutual intelligibility is not necessarily impaired, shortly after the Second World War, linguists claimed that speaking a dialect other than the standard language would impair childrens learning abilities. It also brought about a general opinion among speakers of Low Saxon that having the slightest accent, in Dutch, would reduce job opportunities and social status. Throughout the 1960s, the language inspired many to form dialect preservation circles and groups. Many of them were interested in preserving rather than promoting the language. The prevailing tone was one of melancholy and nostalgia and their focus was often on preserving cultural traits considered typical to speakers of the language, such as rural life and traditional practices, crafts and costumes. That merely confirmed many of the stereotypes about speakers of the language. Another tone was rather literary in nature, though well-intended, it caused even more estrangement with younger generations. At the same time, knowledge of and appreciation for related varieties was poor and that resulted in little co-operation and no nationwide coordination. Other attempts to unite the different dialect circles were met with cynicism, the conception prevailed that the dialects were too different to unite. In 1975, the rock n roll band Normaal boldly shook all perceptions of Low Saxon, until then, Low Saxon was mostly restricted to traditional folklore music. Normaal openly denounced all Dutch disdain, praised farmers and local life and boldly used Achterhooks Low Saxon, voicing the opinion. Their hit song Oerend Hard, a song about two bikers who lose their lives in an accident, took the charts by storm, and it quickly garnered them a large fan base, even in non-Low Saxon areas, such as Fryslân and Limburg. In 1996, Dutch Low Saxon was added to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Dutch provinces now receive minor funds for preserving and promoting the use of Low Saxon
28.
Fering
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Fering is the dialect of North Frisian spoken on the island of Föhr in the German region of North Frisia. Fering refers to the Fering Frisian name of Föhr, Feer, together with the Öömrang, Sölring, and Heligolandic dialects, it forms part of the insular group of North Frisian dialects and it is very similar to Öömrang. Around 3,000 of Föhrs 8,700 people speak Fering, constituting a third of all North Frisian speakers, an unknown number of emigrants in the United States of America, mainly in New York and Northern California, speak Fering as well. Fering differs from other North Frisian dialects in that it is used publicly on Föhr. The municipalities of Oldsum and Süderende in the part of Föhr are strongholds of the dialect. Personal names on Föhr are still today greatly influenced by a Frisian element, notably hypocorisms and names with two elements are common. Early borrowings were made from the Danish language and the Christianisation of the North Frisians around 1000 A. D. brought a modest influence of Christian, in the Age of Sail, Dutch and West Frisian forms became popular. Family names were usually patronymic, i. e. they were created as genitives from the fathers given name. Contrary to the Scandinavian Petersen or Petersson, meaning Peters son and this practice was prohibited by the Danish Crown in 1771 for the Duchy of Schleswig and was therefore abandoned in the eastern part of Föhr. As western Föhr was a part of the Danish kingdom until 1864. Apart from Dutch names, the seafarers in Dutch service also introduced many loanwords in Dutch language to Fering which are still in use today. It has been observed that apart from Afrikaans, no other language outside the Netherlands proper has been influenced as much by the Dutch language as the North Frisian insular dialects. Examples for Fering include, Other loanwords were derived from American English when many emigrated from Föhr to the United States. Examples include, The r is pronounced as alveolar trill. The diphthongs ia, ua and ui as well as the triphthong uai are falling diphthongs, the current orthographic rules for Fering and Öömrang were defined in 1971. Peters, Otto Bremer and Reinhard Arfsten had each created their own Fering orthography, long vowels including those with umlauts are always written as double letters while consonants are short by default. Capital letters are used in the beginning of a sentence. One of the first publicly noticed writers was Arfst Jens Arfsten who began writing anecdotes in Fering around 1855, others include Stine Andresen who was a poet and writer from Wyk whose literature often refers to her native island
29.
Goesharde Frisian
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Goesharde Frisian is a collective term for three of the ten dialects of the North Frisian language. Goesharde Frisian is spoken in the historical Goesharde region north of Husum, the three distinct dialects are Northern, Central and Southern Goesharde Frisian. The latter became extinct with the death of the two last speakers in 1980 and 1981 in Hattstedt, Central Goesharde Frisian is therefore now the southernmost dialect of mainland North Frisian. The Northern Goesharde dialect is divided into two local varieties, the Hoorninger Fräisch of Langenhorn and the Hoolmer Freesch of Ockholm. The two remaining dialects of Goesharde Frisian are also threatened by acute extinction, already in the early 20th century only Ockholm in the Northern Goesharde region had been identified as a truly Frisian village with a majority of Frisian-speaking households and children. Also the Central Goesharde Frisian is severely threatened, in 2006 the last local speaker died in Bohmstedt and only few speakers are remaining in Drelsdorf
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Heligolandic dialect
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Heligolandic is the dialect of the North Frisian language spoken on the German island of Heligoland in the North Sea. It is spoken today by some 500 of the islands 1,650 inhabitants and is taught in schools. In fact Fering and Öömrang are closer in linguistic aspects to the dialect of Heligoland than to that of their neighbouring island Sylt, Heligolandic also contains a variety of loanwords from 19th-century Modern English due to the 73-year British control of the island. James Krüss is probably the most notable author of poems and narrations in Heligolandic while Maria Leitgeber wrote the most substantial prose
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Saterland Frisian
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Saterland Frisian, also known as Sater Frisian or Saterlandic, is the last living dialect of the East Frisian language. It is closely related to the other Frisian languages—North Frisian, which, like Saterland Frisian, is spoken in Germany, and West Frisian, Old East Frisian used to be spoken in East Frisia, the region between the Dutch river Lauwers and the German river Weser. The area also included two small districts on the east bank of the Weser, the lands of Wursten and Würden, the Old East Frisian language could be divided into two dialect groups, Weser Frisian to the east, and Ems Frisian to the west. From 1500 onwards, Old East Frisian slowly had to give way in the face of the pressure put on it by the surrounding Low German dialects. By the middle of the century, Ems Frisian had almost completely died out. It held out the longest on the island of Wangerooge, where the very last Weser Frisian speaker died in 1953, in this dialect, referred to in German as Ostfriesisch, the Frisian substratum is still evident, despite heavy Germanisation. Saterland, which is believed to have been colonised by Frisians from East Frisia in the century, was for a long time surrounded by impassable moors. This, together with the fact that Sater Frisian always had a superior to Low German among the inhabitants of the area. Another important factor might be that after the Thirty Years War, Today, estimates of the number of speakers vary slightly. Saterland Frisian is spoken by approximately 2,250 people, out of a population of the Saterland area of some 10,000. An estimated 2,000 people speak the language well, of slightly less than a half are native speakers. The vast majority of native speakers belong to the older generation and 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. There are three fully mutually intelligible dialects, corresponding to the three villages of the municipality of Saterland, Ramsloh, Scharrel, and Strücklingen. The Ramsloh dialect now somewhat enjoys a status as a language, since a grammar. The German government has not committed significant resources to the preservation of Sater Frisian, most of the work to secure the endurance of this language is therefore done by the Seelter Buund. Along with North Frisian and five languages, Sater Frisian was included in Part III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages by Germany in 1998. Since about 1800, Sater Frisian has attracted the interest of a number of linguists. During the last century, a small literature developed in it, also the New Testament of the Bible has been translated into Sater Frisian
Frisia in Northwestern Europe
