Boter, Brot and griene cheese

Language cannot be viewed separately from history. There are many words and expressions that go back centuries and are inextricably linked to the culture of the area in which they are used. This is especially true if the language has become part of a story, such as with the Frisian sentence Bûter, brea en griene tsiis, wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries.

Bûter, brea en griene tsiis

Two teams
In previous episodes of this series, it has already been mentioned a number of times that many West Germanic words can be divided into two teams: German-Dutch and Frisian-English, in the order of the route from 'Germany' by which the language has ended up into 'England'. An example often cited to underline the similarity between Frisian and English is the (in Friesland) well-known statement from the introduction. If you put those sentences under each other in the four languages, quite a few things stand out immediately:

Bûter, brea en griene tsiis,	wa't dat net sizze kin,	is gjin oprjochte Fries.
Butter, bread and green cheese,	whoever cannot say that,	is no true Frisian.
Boter, brood en groene kaas,	wie dat niet kan zeggen,	is geen oprechte/echte Fries.
Butter, Brot und grüner Käse,	wer das nicht sagen kann,	ist kein wahrer Friese.

Rye versus wheat
Before I go into the similarities and differences, I have to make two comments. At first: in the diagram above, I have translated brea as bread, brood, and Brot. That's wrong if you look at the products that are meant by it today. If a Frisian speaks of brea, he is referring to Frisian rye bread and not to wheat bread or something similar, which is meant by the words in the other three languages. This type of bread is called bôle in Frisian. The reason for this is that rye bread was once the staple food in Friesland, but also in other parts of the Northern Netherlands and in Brabant. I think – but have no proof – that in Frisian the word brea has been used for what was known under that name, and that for the new product with wheat and a different preparation method a different word has been chosen, while in other parts of the Netherlands the word brood has been retained and people adapted the meaning to the changed product. For the sake of linguistic comparison, I now use the words as I have put them in the diagram. According to the EWN those words do have the same origin, so I think that choice is justified.

Sounds and characters
The second comment on my overview has to do with converting sounds to characters, or: spelling. Frisian, English, Dutch and German all use basically the same Latin alphabet, although there are some minor differences. For example, German has the ß and umlauts (ä, ö and ü) are used, and the Frisian alphabet does not have q and x, but does have 'extra vowels' such as the â, ê, ô and û. In addition, there are sounds that occur in the different languages, but that are written differently. As can be seen in the diagram: the Frisians use ii for the 'long /i/ sound', while the English note that sound as ee. We also know the double e in Dutch, but then it sounds like what the Germans write as ä. That is confusing (I hope I didn't lose you in the previous sentences...), so the phonetic alphabet is often used in linguistics. I'm also going to do that for a bit, but I can imagine you don't immediately have that alphabet ready (neither do I). Knowing what the words are, it is pretty decipherable, I think. A small explanation of the characters that are not 'letters' is perhaps useful: the two triangles above each other (ː) indicate that it is a long sound, a sound in brackets is not clearly audible, and the 'high comma' (ˈ) indicates a kind of short inhalation before pronouncing the sound. If you still want an overview of all sounds, you can look here for Dutch and here for English. Ready? Let's go:

butər brɪːə εn griː(ə)nə tsiːs	wa't dɒt nεt sezə kɪn	ɪs gjɪn ɔprjɔχtə ˈfriː(ə)s
ˈbʌtə(r) brεd ænd ɡriːn tʃiːz	huːˈevə(r) ˈkænɒt seɪ ðæt	ɪz nəʊ truː ˈfriːʒn
botər brot εn γrunə ˈkaːs	wi dαt nit kαn zεγə(n)	ɪs γen ɔprεχtə/εχtə ˈfris
butə(r) broːt unt gryːnə(r) ˈkɛːzə,	veːr dαs nɪçt sagən kαn	ɪst kain vaːrə(r) ˈfrizə

What pronunciation?
I used to wonder why we don't all just switch to the phonetic alphabet. It takes some getting used to, but if you know the characters, you can just write down what you hear. That would make spelling easier for a lot of people, especially for dyslexics. However, the sentences above show why that's not going to work: the pronunciation differs per region. If someone else would write the same words phonetically, chances are the result will differ. For example, I have noted the Frisian sizze as we pronounce it: [sezə]. However, there are also many Frisians who say [sɪzə] – I even think this form is seen by the various authorities as 'standard pronunciation'. Another example is the German nicht, which I wrote in the diagram as [nɪçt], with a short 'i' as in 'fish', because a German dictionary indicated it that way. If I had relied on my own hearing and knowledge, I would have chosen [niçt], with a sound as in 'meet'. As far as English is concerned, I used British English, which produces different characters than if American English had been my starting point, regardless of all the differences in pronunciation that exist within those languages. It gets really complicated with the 'r' in Dutch. The English Wikipedia page about Dutch phonology (sound theory) mentions six variants alone, and the Dutch Wikipedia even devotes an entire page to it. But then again, the fact that in Dutch we can freely use six different sounds without interfering with the meaning of the word and without causing us to not understand each other is of course quite special.

Grutte Pier
Back to bûter, brea en griene tsiis. After all the reservations in the previous paragraphs you'd almost forget I was going to write something about similarities and differences between that sentence in Frisian, English, Dutch and German. Is Frisian indeed more like English than Dutch or German? What does the Frisian phrase actually have to do with the local culture? And why is bûter, brea en griene tsiis called a shibbolet? I'll come back to that in the next piece in this series, but in the meantime I'll lift a corner of the veil with a video from the site 11en30. The voice-over is in Frisian, but you can choose English subtitles: