What relevance does that have? I'd say it's more important to acknowledge the fact that there are zero Irish speakers who don't also speak English. Including it as an official EU language is an ideological project rather than a pragmatic one.
Because there is a cause to revert the intentional damage done to Irish by the former rulers of the land. With Frisian there was no resistance to it. I think official language status helps provide resources to conservationists of various languages. And trying to conserve a language most of the speakers don't care about us a lot different than trying to conserve a language people do care about but we're forced to suppress for many years so have less ability to conserve it
Irish is an official language of Ireland (there is signage and instructions in Irish up and down the Republic) , Frisian is not an official language of the Netherlands to the best of my knowledge
Irish is certainly not a robust vigorous language but your 40,000-80,000 numbers downplay it I'd suggest. Here are some statistics from Deepseek
Category Region Number of Speakers Source & Year
Some Ability Republic of Ireland 1,873,997 (40% of population) 2022 Census
Some Ability Northern Ireland 228,600 (12.4% of population) 2021 Census
Daily Speakers Republic of Ireland 71,968 2022 Census
Daily Speakers Northern Ireland 43,557 2021 Census
Native/Fluent Global Estimate ~80,000-170,000 Various Sources
Speakers U.S. United States ~20,000+ Estimate
Nothing against Irish as a language at all - I am just pointing out far more people learn Frisian as their mother tongue.
Whereas Irish seems to be heavily promoted but for whatever reason precious few people learn it as their mother tongue, and those who do so are primarily in an area where it’s always been that way. For better or worse, people are preferring to use English at home and Irish is treated like a luxury good.
Correct. Frisia (or Fryslân) is a bilingual province. Frisian is an official language of the Netherlands. Someone called in front of a judge in the north of the Netherlands has the right to be heard in Frisian, for example.
Fun fact: villages, towns, and cities in Frisia often have names which differ in Frisian and Dutch. In those cases the signs at the place limits will have both names listed; the official one on top (which in some cases is the Dutch name (e.g., Leeuwarden/Ljouwert) and in some cases the Frisian (e.g., Gytsjerk/Giekerk)).
I really like that the intercom announcement voice in our trains (and also buses?) is bilingual.
And huh interesting, I didn't know that for some places with bilingual names, the Dutch name is official and for others the Frysian is? Who gets to decide that, the municipality?
Yep, the municipality decides on such matters. Places do still occasionally have their names changed (rarely of course, because it involves a lot of work including updating addresses), usually aligning with local use. In the case of De Westereen a name from the local dialect replaced both the Dutch and Frisian names (Zwaagwesteinde and Westerein, respectively).
In a number of cases originally Frisian names actually supplanted older Dutch names (e.g., Burgum, Grou, Eastermar, etc.), so those places have just one name in both languages (except on the Dutch language Wikipedia because of weird reasoning about allowable sources and apparently a hatred of Frisianised Dutch names).
I dunno about the situation with the languages of Italy, from a cursory glance at Wikipedia it seems a _lot_ more complicated than Frysian/Dutch in NL, so I really don't think it's anything "like saying" that.
But "official" means exactly what it means, and when I'm saying "Frysian is an official language of the Netherlands", it means that it's recognized as an official language of Netherlands, by the Dutch government. And if it was up to the provinces I dunno, but it's not. Frysian is the one that's considered one of the official languages of the Netherlands.
I also don't think comparing to Italy makes sense at all because countries are different and decide what are their official languages for very different historical reasons. For instance you can look up what Dutch government body is responsible for deciding the Frysian language is an official one in the Netherlands and why, and you will very likely find no Italian equivalent of that.
It's not really that difficult, an official language OF a country is recognized at a national level. Thus all official government communication must be issued in that language. In the Netherlands, only Dutch has that level of recognition. Same in Italy for Italian
Then there are other, regionally-rocognized language that local governments use alongside the national one (West Frysian in Friesland, German in South Tyrol, etc.), and may even enjoy a majority of speakers within those regions, but they are not "an official language OF" the wider country.
in response to: “what language is the Constitution of the Netherlands written in?”
Deepseek answers with, “The Constitution of the Netherlands is written in Dutch.
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and the language used for all primary government and legal documents, including the Constitution (Grondwet).
Key Context:
Official Language: Dutch is the sole official language for national governance.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands: It's worth noting that the Kingdom of the Netherlands also includes the Caribbean countries of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. While they have their own official languages (Papiamento and English), the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which governs the relationship between these countries, is also originally written in Dutch.
No Multilingual Version: Unlike some countries (e.g., Canada, Belgium, or Switzerland), the Netherlands does not have an official, legally equivalent version of its Constitution in any other language.
Therefore, the authoritative and legally binding text of the Constitution exists only in Dutch.”
Frisian may be an official regional language but you're not going to convince me that it's an official language of the Netherlands. Love that I'm getting downvotes about this.
The Constitution of Ireland is written in Irish and English and to the best of my knowledge where differences arise the Irish one takes precedence.
As a Brit I feel very at home when hearing/reading Dutch and Frisian. It’s a reminder that England and the Low Countries share a lot of close history all the way back to Anglo-Saxon times; of being fishers, traders, burghers and mercenaries moving around the North Sea chasing opportunities, spreading and augmenting languages.
“Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk”
That’s because all those languages are all essentially rooted in the languages/dialects of the Germanic tribes. It is why the Dutch get their English name from the German for German, Deutsch; and Nederland (Neder = Low) is German/Dutch for the Lowland Deutsch.
I’m sure everyone is aware that English comes from Anglish, i.e., the Angles as in the Germanic tribe.
Deutsch is derived from proto-germanic (as best we can tell) þiudiskaz, meaning “the people” i.e., the group of the different self associating tribes. It gets far more interesting in that it seems many of the strong dialects of especially southern Germany, Austria, and England have in fact retained some very old words and pronunciations that were lost in more standardized, conformed, and perverted dialects.
Not only on the language but also in gastronomy and architecture. When I see old towns in UK I usually think about Dutch towns but just without any biking infrastructure.
Dialect of Liverpool is called scouse, after a popular local dish -> lobscouse/Labskaus is very popular (love/hate really) in northern Germany as well.
> However modern standard Dutch (Nederlands, Hollands) is based upon Franconian, rather than Saxon dialects.
> Some of these [Old Saxon] speakers took part in the Germanic conquest of England in the fifth century AD. While it is not true that English and Plattdeutsch derive completely from the same source, the Old Saxon input into Anglo-Saxon was of primary importance and this linguistic group contributed greatly to the Anglo-Saxon dialects which our English forefathers spoke.
Old English and Old Norse are mutually intelligible (especially after you realize the precise correspondences like un- = o-). Gunnlaugs Saga explicitly says the English and Norse are of one tongue and features a Norse poet singing to an English king. As another example, Ohthere of Hålogaland (Norway) visited King Alfred's 9th century English court and simply spoke to them in his own language:
> Whoever preserved this story was also curious about Ohthere’s descriptions of where the Angles had lived ‘before they came into this land’ (England). Members of Alfred's court remembered that their ancestors came from mainland Europe, and they wanted to learn more about the lands which they identified as their own places of origin.
The scribe explicitly wrote things like "he said krán which we call crein" showing they were speaking in their own languages. It's even clearer if you consider our standard Old English is West Saxon from 850 and our standard Old Norse is from 1250 in Iceland (more different than the Danish variety of most Scandinavians in England). At the same time point,they would have more similarities (8th century Danish had wír before w turned to v).
Anglo-Saxons not Dutch. But the short answer is yes. The word Welsh is derived from the Old English word for foreigner.
Latin would have been spoken in towns and cities but as Roman rule collapsed it was replaced by Brittonic (ancestor of Welsh), unlike in the continent where it developed into various Latin derived Romance languages.
Dutch is funny - when I hear people speaking Dutch I almost feel like I should be able to understand it (but clearly as I've never learnt it, I can't).
The cadence and general way it sounds is much closer to English than any other language
They're children were taught in schools that ensured that they learned English but many adult immigrants never learned to speak English. Carnegie Steel used to try to avoid having too many workers with a common language as part of a strategy to make unionization more difficult. And when Norman Borlaug was growing up in
Saude, Iowa in the 1920s there were still a lot of older people around who only spoke Norweigen.
This raises an interesting question. Is there only one dialect of German in the LLM? My understanding is that the German German and Austrian German dialects are significantly different.
My German teacher always claimed that Swiss German and German German (Hochdeutsch) were so different that she needed subtitles to understand it, and she didn't understand why they weren't considered separate languages.
It depends. There is not one Swiss German but multiple subdialects. The language spoke around the Bern region very far away from German while the one from Zürich or Basel is much closer. Since there is no official written from they never really converged to a homogeneous language.
This sort of thing always makes me think of the English my grandmother from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains spoke. It vas very distinct from standard American English.
They really are very, very different. Knowledge of one helps with the other, but it's far more than just "a couple of weeks to adjust to the accent", for example.
EDIT: It's worth noting that this is mostly a spoken thing, AIUI - most formal/semi-formal writing would be in Hochdetusch rather than a local dialect.
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I'm specifically talking about colloquial Swiss German -- which is, I assume, what you mean by "the dialects" -- and not about Swiss Standard German, which is indeed very similar to German Standard German and can't be considered a different language.
Any literate German can read the NZZ easily, but they cannot have a colloquial conversation with an average person from Zürich, unless the latter switches to standard German (which is a foreign language for them, though one they have to learn from age 6).
> Any literate German can read the NZZ easily, but they cannot have a colloquial conversation with an average person from Zürich, unless the latter switches to standard German (which is a foreign language for them, though one they have to learn from age 6).
I presume they also pick up a lot of standard German in the media: there's lots of German movies, and Germany has the biggest movie dubbing industry in the world, too. There's some Swiss German media, but not nearly as much as there's on offer in standard German.
Some Chinese dialects are a lot further apart than eg English and German. They are mostly called 'Chinese dialects' rather than languages for political reasons. Gotta project that unity.
This, but with something oddly french about it, at least in the way it sounds.
As a native french speaker, no other language gives me that "why don't I understand what they say... oh, right, that's not my language!" feeling. Something with frequencies used, I suppose, but it always puzzles me.
When spoken? Almost certainly. But I think they mostly write in Hochdeutsch, especially in formal contexts, at least that I've seen (private chats/etc are a totally different matter), so I don't foresee any major issues there.
Austrian standard german is slightly different from the German variant, even when written. The differences are pretty minor, though, so it’s very possible to have a relatively long text without being able to tell which one it actually is (especially when potatoes are not referenced in it).
Well, even without any government mandates, ChatGPT is very happy to give you lots of dialects of English (and many other languages, too). Just ask for it.
Eg it does a passable impression of Singapore's Singlish.
Not a native, but from what I understand, austrian german is pretty similar to what is spoken in southern Germany, but northern germany is significantly different.
Is English a legacy official language then from the time the UK was a member (I‘m guessing Ireland nominated Irish instead of English). Aside it feels very un-EU to push this limitation, as I was under the assumption that EU was all about celebrating (European) diversity.
The history here is more complex than that… originally Irish was not an EU language because Ireland just used English… then as part of one the cycles of EU treaty renegotiation, Ireland successfully pushed for it to be made a secondary EU language… and then later successfully pushed for it to be upgraded to full status… so Ireland actually has two EU languages, their original one (English) and their newer one (Irish). Because the practical reality is everyone in Ireland is fluent in English-around 60% of Irish people can’t even speak basic Irish, and fluent Irish speakers is <10% of the population
Also, English remains one of the main working languages of the EU bureaucracy, because for many EU states (especially in Eastern Europe) it is a more popular foreign language than the other two (French and German)-when Czech diplomats need to talk to Spanish diplomats, English is the language they choose.
This idea people have here that “each country gets to nominate a language” isn’t how it actually works. The treaties just contain a list of languages, and which languages are in the list is down to diplomatic negotiations not any coherent principle.
Well I can only assume that when UK departed the EU, English wasn't removed automatically even though no country remaining in the EU nominates it as their official language of choice.
The UK was not a founding member of the EEC which preceded it, I don't know and haven't easily been able to find out, but it wouldn't be that surprising if the European Parliament already used English as a common language for policy etc.
(In fact to strengthen that probability, if it had been say French, when and why would it have switched go English? Just because the UK joined?)
Including the nasty political side-show that is Ulster Scots - literally only brought in as a chilling effect 'whataboutism' to diminish support when Irish speakers ask for language rights in Northern Ireland.
Well Scots is a real language. As much as English or any other. Whether enough people speak it especially in NI to justify it having an official status and such is another matter.
This is one of those topics where the Hacker News take is unlikely to be correct. There's a lot of strong feeling here, and an outsider would need at least three books to understand the historical context (one of which, afaict, has not been written yet: it's oral tradition only).
People closer to the issue are better-placed to gather the necessary information, but again: strong feeling. Most people find it hard to get past that. The most informed person I know is so biased that I don't at all trust their conclusions.
Part of the issue some people take with Ulster-Scots is that the current official 21st century literature doesn't read anything like the historic literature, which English speakers can easily read and understand. It's often made up of slang terms and archaic spelling, in an attempt to be as different as possible to English. Native speakers have complained that official documents and signage in Ulster-Scots are incomprehensible to them.
> the current official 21st century literature doesn't read anything like the historic literature
Does modern English read like historical English?
> Native speakers have complained that official documents and signage in Ulster-Scots are incomprehensible to them.
Sure, there are tonnes of issues with the "officialisation" of any language but the fact that there are "native speakers" involved in the debate strongly suggests it wasn't all just made up for political reasons, which was the point I was responding to.
>Does modern English read like historical English?
If you can read and understand text from the 18th century, then yes. We're not talking about Middle English or Old English.
>but the fact that there are "native speakers" involved in the debate
I should have put native speakers in quotes as well. What counts as a native Ulster Scots speaker is someone who speaks English with an NI accent with some localisms thrown in.
Nobody speaks the official Ulster Scots that was invented because the Irish language was getting support and political leaders on the other side of the community felt they deserved something as well. The Protestant community in NI see it as a bit of an embarrassment.
> If you can read and understand text from the 18th century, then yes.
Yes, and I can read and understand historical Ulster Scots as well, but you were making a different point about codification/drift, no? The English I would find in those historical writings is quite different from what is being taught in schools today or recommended in style guides.
> What counts as a native Ulster Scots speaker is someone who speaks English with an NI accent with some localisms thrown in.
Then by your definition I am a native speaker. So how can we square it that you're telling me native speakers feel one way while I feel another way?
> Nobody speaks the official Ulster Scots
That's the nature of any newly codified minority language.
> The Protestant community in NI see it as a bit of an embarrassment.
There is no "protestant community" in Northern Ireland. A Dungannon farmer, an East Belfast loyalist and a BT9 lecturer will all give you very different views despite being of protestant background.
My point regarding the "official" language is that it bears little resemblance to the dialect that largely died out in the 20th century. i.e. it's a fabrication. Contrast that with the differing dialects of Irish where the grammar is identical with some variations in pronunciation.
I'm not entertaining the notion that I have to pretend you're a native speaker when you've made clear you're only identifying as such for the purpose of making an argument.
>There is no "protestant community" in Northern Ireland.
Anyone who applies for a job in NI fills out a form where they are asked if they are a member of "the Protestant community", "the Roman Catholic community" or neither. You're denying the factual existence of the different communities in NI for the purpose of winning an argument on the internet.
> My point regarding the "official" language is that it bears little resemblance to the dialect that largely died out in the 20th century i.e. it's a fabrication
Could you outline the key ways in which it differs? And say why that suggests the language was later "fabricated?"
> I'm not entertaining the notion that I have to pretend you're a native speaker when you've made clear you're only identifying as such for the purpose of making an argument.
If you won't entertain the notion that I'm a native speaker could you amend your definition of "native speaker" or explain what differentiates me from the native speakers whose complaints you referenced previously? And could you let us know where we can read about their complaints?
> Anyone who applies for a job in NI fills out a form where they are asked if they are a member of "the Protestant community", "the Roman Catholic community" or neither.
Of course you understand that the "protestant community" is not an homogenous group with shared views and opinions on these things. The reason that question is on the forms is because of historical discrimination against Catholics and the need to quantify heritage issues in order to avoid such discrimination forwards.
One protestant might feel embarrassment, another might feel pride, and another might not care at all. Suggesting there's a unified view from "the protestant community' is disingenuous.
>Suggesting there's a unified view from "the protestant community' is disingenuous.
I've yet to meet a member of that community in person (now you've decided they exist) who has any interest in Ulster Scots as a language, (even people who are quite opinionated and argumentative on other NI topics). This is evident in the lack of Ulster Scots language classes. There are more Irish classes running in East Belfast than for Ulster Scots.
Outside of the political class (who are only interested in it as a means to stifle support for the Irish language) Ulster Scots advocates are exclusively found online.
It doesn't. It's just an opinion piece about the use of neologisms in certain publications. It makes the same claim about incomprehensibility for native speakers but also fails to reference the voices of any actual native speakers. Who are they? Do they really complain about this as you said?
> I've yet to meet a member of that community in person who has any interest in Ulster Scots as a language
Well? I have met them. I've met lecturers at Queens such as Ivan Herbison studying the thing, I've met artists like Willie Drennan touring the country sharing contemporary poetry and song in Ulster Scots. I've met people in the countryside of Antrim not only with an interest in it, but speaking it day to day. Just because you haven't personally encountered these people doesn't mean they don't exist.
> now you've decided they exist
This is quite unfriendly. I made a clear distinction between what you were claiming--a single protestant community who are collectively embarrassed by Ulster Scots--and the collection of people with a shared background who identify as protestants for the sake of anti-discrimination laws, but who are otherwise diverse in their beliefs and opinions. To say that in so doing I somehow conceded your original claim is again disingenuous. It also seems absurd in relation to your broader point to now insist that just because some politician decided a form should say "protestant community" that that is necessarily reflective of an on-the-ground reality.
> There are more Irish classes running in East Belfast than for Ulster Scots.
By your definition of native speakers everyone in East Belfast is already brought up speaking Ulster Scots at home, so of course there's more interest in other languages. There are more people from East Belfast attending Irish classes than English classes too, it doesn't mean no one is interested in English.
You asked for opinions and you got opinions. I can't disprove your claims about who you've met and what language they were speaking. I can only say it's at odds with my experience.
>By your definition of native speakers everyone in East Belfast is already brought up speaking Ulster Scots at home
But reading and writing in it? And would they agree they're speaking Ulster Scots or would they say it's English?
>There are more people from East Belfast attending Irish classes than English classes too
Did you not learn English in school? I find it hard to believe English isn't taught in East Belfast schools. And that's not counting English as a second language classes for immigrant communities. What language is the signage in in East Belfast?
My comments are entirely aside from the dialect vs. language argument as a miniscule minority care about Ulster Scots in NI as a language in its own right - comparative even to say Cant or Shelta - versus the usual Stormont tomfoolery like 'cash for ash' scandals.
Simply put, Ulster Scots prominence in legislation is merely a reflection of bad-faith political negotiations by Unionists to degrade the status of the Irish Language Act by proxy. Anyone on the ground knows it for the dog-whistle that it is, used simply to curry favour with a particularly sectarian unionist base in as a counter to the Irish Language provisions outlined and agreed to in the Good Friday Agreement.
This has more or less been the case ever since the forced Ulster plantations lead to the development of Ulster Scots as a defined community with resilient Protestant and unionist ties. It'd be far more credible if Fingal tried to secede from Dublin and the Republic tomorrow morning using Yola as a justification.
In short, the ILA and promotion of Gaeilge in the north is about trying to make some small reparation at a state level for a cultural genocide perpetrated by our Colonists, and to help re-establish the oldest written vernacular language in western Europe, dating back over 2,500 years.
The promotion of Ulster Scots however... well the Commissioner is literally called 'Commissioner for Ulster Scots and Ulster British Tradition'. This is after DUP members removed themselves from the equality and good relations group after basically fillibustering for 5 years of discussions on bi-lingual signs to force a stalemate.
Haha I just added it as a fun fact, I don't actually believe folks will need to start retraining things, or that this is likely to be at the top of the priorities list for anyone. Party programmes are aspirational anyway.
Not sure what happened there but your link disproves your statement.
Specifically, the link says two things:
1. That 2 parties want to add *limburgish* to the list, not frisian. That's the bottom-right part of The Netherlands, about as far removed from Friesland as you can get (which is the top part of the Netherlands).
2. That one party wants to add Frisian, but, that is a one-day fly party that will cease to exist in a few hours as they will get 0 seats in this election and will presumably call it a day right after. It was a party founded to support one person and that person has quit due to workstress, and is highly unlikely to return as this _was_ his return. Their opinion used to be relevant as they had 13.3% of the seats this past session (and didn't exist before it). But, it isn't here.
Whoops yeah, misremembered - didn't reread as I posted the link. Was more of a fun off-the-cuff remark, so didn't spend too much energy on it. But yes, I meant Limburgish rather than Frisian.
Best get to retraining those models.