| Wursten Frisian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Wursten, today a part of northernLower Saxony, Germany |
| Ethnicity | East Frisians |
| Extinct | Early 18th century |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Wursten Frisian was a dialect of theEast Frisian language that is thought to have been spoken until the early 18th century in thelandscape of Wursten betweenBremerhaven andCuxhaven, Germany. Together withHarlingerland Frisian andWangerooge Frisian it belonged to the Weser Frisian group of dialects. The last East Frisian dialect still spoken today isSaterland Frisian, an Ems-group dialect.
TheWursten landscape was not part of the original settling area of theFrisians but was eventually colonised by them in the 8th century A.D. and became an independent municipality. When the East Frisian language began to fade in the 15th century it was successively replaced byWest Low German dialects in the area between the riversLauwers andWeser. In Wursten however, the East Frisian language was upheld slightly longer than inEast Frisia proper and inOmmelanden which is now a part of the Netherlands.
At the end of the 17th century the Wursten dialect was described in two lists of words but at the time it had strongly come under pressure. It is believed that in the first half of the 18th century, the Wursten dialect had as well become extinct.
The Weser dialects of the East Frisian language were unique among theGermanic languages as they kept full vowels in secondary syllables. This phenomenon was especially distinctive in the Wursten Frisian, the easternmost of the East Frisian dialects. InOld Frisian words with a short stem vowel the accentuation shifted from the first to the second syllable. Thus it could happen that not only the full vowel was preserved in what was now a stressed secondary syllable but the old stem vowel was partially reduced to a total loss. This transition process created words likesnuh (son, from Old Frisiansunu) orkma (to come, from Old Fr.koma).[1]
The only preserved full sentence in Wursten Frisian reads:"Kma wit hart ick will di wit tell" [Come here, I want to tell you something].[1]
Today, there are still somesubstratum words of Wursten Frisian in the Low German dialect of the Wursten landscape. Århammar listsMaon (socage),Bau(d)n (horse-fly),Schuur/Schuulschotten (dragonfly) andjill'n (to shriek) as examples. Nothing remains however of the phonological characteristics of Wursten Frisian.[2]