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The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinct from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: besides the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, which is present in Low German as well, Anglo-Frisian brightening and palatalization of /k/ are for the most part unique to the modern Anglo-Frisian languages: English cheese, Scots cheese and West ...
Frisian is the language most closely related to English and Scots, but after at least five hundred years of being subject to the influence of Dutch, modern Frisian in some aspects bears a greater similarity to Dutch than to English; one must also take into account the centuries-long drift of English away from Frisian.
English is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic.
West Frisian, or simply Frisian (West Frisian: Frysk or Westerlauwersk Frysk; Dutch: Fries, also Westerlauwers Fries), is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the Frisian languages.
The West Frisian languages are a group of closely related, though not mutually intelligible, Frisian languages of the Netherlands. Due to the marginalization of all but mainland West Frisian, they are often portrayed as dialects of a single language. (See that article for the history of the languages.)
The most remarkable feature is the use of ee /eː/ where Wood Frisian and most other West Frisian dialects use ei or ij /ai/. This sound change from /ai/ and sometimes /ɪ/ to /eː/ brings us some striking similarities with English in spoken or written texts as most differences to standard West Frisian also concern differences to English.
West Frisian is more analytic than its ancestor language Old Frisian, largely abandoning the latter's case system. It features two genders and inflects nouns in the singular and plural numbers . Verbs inflect for person , number , mood , and tense , though many forms are formed using periphrastic constructions.
The closest relatives of North Frisian are the two other Frisian languages, the Saterland Frisian of north-western Lower Saxony, Germany, and the West Frisian language spoken in the northern Netherlands. Together, the three sub-groups form the group of Frisian languages. English is also closely related to Frisian.