West Frisian, more commonly known as Frisian, is a language that is primarily spoken in Friesland, a region of the Netherlands. It has about , native speakers and , second language speakers. The language is noteworthy for being, linguistically speaking, the closest relative of Modern English still in existence with the exception of Scots, which is frequently considered a dialect of English.
English and Frisian can trace their shared ancestry to the Anglo-Frisian language group, a group of mutually intelligible languages to which Anglo-Saxon and Old Frisian, ancestors of modern English and Frisian respectively, both belonged. Instead, it was more likely that Anglo-Saxon and Old Frisian were both part of a dialect continuum of Western Germanic languages, possibly a result of the close trading relationships throughout the long-lived Hanseatic League during which Middle Low German had been a lingua franca.
At one time Old English and Frisian were mutually intelligible, but as time passed English and Frisian acquired divergent traits as a result of differing sociopolitical circumstances. The languages also share the palatalisation of velar consonants.
However, the languages later split from one another due to differing circumstances in their interactions with other linguistic communities. The Saxons belonged to a group that migrated from the European continent to the British Isles, living alongside and gradually assimilating the local Brythonic and Celtic speaking populations.
An example is the introduction of the progressive, or β ing form, of English. The formation of the β ing form has always been a mystery to historical linguists, who note that there is no other example of such a phenomenon in any other Germanic dialect. The most likely explanation is that this syntactic structure was adapted from the Celtic language during the cultural assimilation of the Celts.
