Frysk út Noard-Hollân út de 17e iuw? (Frisian from Holland from the 17th century; with an extensive English summary in §6)

Abstract

The text known as 1643a from the corpus of early-Modern West Frisian texts is here reinterpreted as a specimen of the Frisian language that existed until the 17^th century in North Holland. While it is widely acknowledged that Frisian was the language of Holland from the early Middle Ages, where it was gradually replaced by Dutch from the 9^th century, the language itself was only known through indirect evidence of place names, substratum words and a few glosses. This text is the first coherent example of Frisian spoken in Holland. Although no author and/or location is mentioned, the Hollandic origin can be identified on the basis of a number of features: its place of publication (Amsterdam) and the fact that it was addressed to young women in Amsterdam; the content of the verse, describing a practice of courting common in North Holland in the 17^th century; its linguistic features which are on the one hand clearly Frisian, yet differ substantially from West Frisian as attested in the 17^th century; and finally because of many linguistics features associated with the Dutch dialects of North Holland in the 17^th-20^th century.