East Frisian Low Saxon, is a West Low German dialect spoken in the Eastern Friesland peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony. It is used quite frequent in every day talk there. About half of the East Frisian population in the coastal region uses Platdüütsk. A lot of people although not being active speakers of Low German are able to understand it to some extent. But both active speaking and passive understanding are in a state of decrease. East Frisia (Ostfriesland) is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages are a group of several hundred languages and dialects (specifically 443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major language families of Europe, as well as many languages of Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as German, English and Dutch. ... Low German (in Low German: Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch) is any of a variety of West Germanic languages spoken in northern Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. ... West Low German is a group of Plattdüütsch dialects spoken in Northwest Germany and East Netherlands. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... West Low German is a group of Plattdüütsch dialects spoken in Northwest Germany and East Netherlands. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... East Frisia (Ostfriesland) is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony. ... With an area of 47,618 km and nearly eight million inhabitants, Lower Saxony (German Niedersachsen) lies in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the countrys sixteen Bundesl nder (federal states). ...

Although an eastern dialect of the Frisian is spoken by about 2000 People in the three villages of Ramsloh, Strücklingen and Scharrel in the Saterland region outside Eastern Friesland, East Frisian Low Saxon is unrelated to Frisian. For other Frisian languages see Frisian language (disambiguation). ...

There are several dialects in Eastern Friesland Low Saxon:

• Standard East Frisian Low Saxon north of Leer, east of the river Ems and

• Brookmer Platt in the Brookmerland and Aurich (Auerk) area and

• Rheiderländer Platt west of the river Ems around the city of Weener

East Frisian Low Saxon differs from Northern Low Saxon by many details which are often Frisian heritage. East Frisia and Groningen (NL) used to be inhabitated by Frisians, so the current Low Saxon dialects build on Frisian substrate, which has led to a large amount of own vocabulary, grammatical and phonological structures which differ from other Low Saxon variants. Northern Low Saxon (in Low Saxon, Nordneddersassisch or Platt) is a Low Saxon dialect. ...

We find a frequent use of diminutives like in the Dutch language, f.ex. Footjes = litte feet, Kluntje = piece of sugar. In many cases diminutives of names especially female ones have become names of their own. For example: Antje (from Anna), Trientje (from Trina = Katharina) etc. Dutch ( ▶ (help· info)), sometimes referred to as Netherlandic in English, is a Low Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium. ...

Based on the special history of Eastern Friesland there are influences and loans from French and the Dutch language which in parts of East Frisia for a long time was the language of the church.

The dialects spoken in East Frisia are closely related to those spoken in the Dutch province of Groningen (Grunnegs, Grünnigs) and in Northern Drenthe (Noordenvelds). The biggest difference seem to be that of loanwords (from Dutch or German, resp.) and the vowel shift in Gronings: [ɛi] → [ɑi, ɔi], [ɑi] → [ai], [ou] → [ɑu] and so forth.

The standard greeting formula is Moin (moi in Gronings), used 24 hours a day. It is nowadays used in whole northern Germany, but more and more spreading to the east, west and south. Moin is a Frisian language greeting from East Frisia, the eastern Netherlands, North Frisia and Flensburg, meaning hello. ...

Links

• http://www.oostfreeske-taal.de Ostfreeske Taal
• http://www.diesel-online.de Diesel - dat oostfreeske Bladdje, the trilingual East Frisian newspaper
• http://www.holger-weigelt.de/projekte/platt/plattrahmen.html