Students learn Frisian at the UvA: ‘Oant de folgjende kear, famkes!’
Every year, about 14 students venture into the Netherlands’ second language: Frisian. In the laid back lecture, it does not matter whether you come from “Fryslan” or know nothing about the province. “I’ve been to Leeuwarden once, but I didn’t hear anyone speaking Frisian there.”
“Rachel, ragel, rach-el,” Frisian students try to say late afternoon at the PC Headquarters. “No, no, no!” exclaims teacher Pieter Duijff cheerfully. “You really have to make this ‘g’ sound in the back of your throat. “Raggggel,” and he lets it resonate in his larynx. One of the students, while desperately trying to find the right ‘g’ in her throat asks: “What does ‘rachel’ actually mean?” Duijff smiles. “Slime...”
Every Friday, Duijff teaches two different elective courses in Frisian. The subjects are free to follow in the optional subjects; there is no such thing as a minor in Frisian. However, students are taught not only about the language, but also the culture of Friesland, which the Frisian Duijff says is often related to the regional language. Duijff starts his day with four hours of ‘Frisian for Beginners’ for students who can hardly speak a word of Frisian. This is followed by four hours of ‘Frisian for Frisians’ for students who already have experience with the language but want to learn to write and speak it better.
Lidewij Bosga, listening intently to Duijff, falls into the latter group. The Groningen native already spoke the age-old language daily at home with her Frisian parents. “It was more natural for my parents, anyway. Dutch is really a second language for them. For me as well, actually.” Once in Amsterdam, however, the Literary and Cultural Analysis student quickly began to miss her “mother tongue.” “In Amsterdam, I suddenly felt really down-to-earth compared to the rest of the city. By taking Frisian here, I can maintain a bit of my connection to the North.”
Duijff is grateful for such Frisians who keep the study of the language alive. “It is definitely a pity that remote dialects of Frisian, such as on Schiermonnikoog, are already disappearing,” the teacher says. “Although,” continues the down-to-earth Frisian, “the world just goes on, too, you know.” Duijff also likes the fact that there are young people who choose Frisian purely for fun. For instance, Noah Welp, an art history student, who chose Frisian for Beginners on the spur of the moment. Grinning, he listens to his consistently Frisian-talking teacher. The native of Beverwijk explains: “I knew absolutely nothing about Friesland. I went to Leeuwarden once, but I didn’t hear anyone speaking Frisian there.”
Welp chose the subject partly because it “seemed easy” to him. “And I saw a nice video once, where an Englishman tried to buy a cow in Middle English in Friesland. I thought it was kind of funny that that worked out.” After all, Frisian has many similarities to English, Duijff confirms. “There are a lot of sounds ‘high in the mouth.’” It is a very melodic language and it’s very easy to make music to it as well, for example.
But the singing of Frisian is not the main reason for studying the language, Duijff thinks. “I was once in a bilingual elementary school, with Frisian and Dutch; they existed in those days. But now teaching Frisian has been marginalized in Friesland too. Many students in recent years say they had poor Frisian education in primary or secondary school, whereas I still write in our language with my Frisian student friends, or with other Frisian teachers at the UvA.”
At the UvA, two optional subjects in Frisian can be taken in the free elective of a bachelor's degree. In “Frisian for Beginners”, students achieve an A2 level in active use. In “Frisian for Frisians,” students aim to achieve a C1 level. “Frisian for Frisians” can also be taken as a follow-up course to “Frisian for Beginners”. Both courses run in the first two blocks of the first semester. The courses are currently taught by Pieter Duijff of the external “Fryske Akademy”, under the auspices of UvA professor of Germanic Linguistics Arjen Versloot.
That is why the teacher takes the train to the UvA every Friday from his farm with some sheeps in Damwâld, below Dokkum. After all, the call of students to be able to speak and write the Frisian of their ancestors still appeared to be present in the capital, too.
The “Fryske Akademy” research institute thus appoints a lecturer to the University of Amsterdam every year. In recent years it has been Duijff, who himself studied Frisian at the UvA, which was abolished in 1991. Frisian as a main subject can now only be studied at the University of Groningen. Although Lidewij did not want to study Frisian there, she states: “I would rather live in Groningen than in Friesland. I find Friesland too remote.” Welp, however, can still see himself living in Friesland. “Living, working, or just a long vacation where you go into the country and talk to Frisian people a bit more. Frisians are very open, I think,” hopes the student from North Holland. “And Mr. Duijff always tells me it's a very beautiful area.”
Whether they want to do something with the language the two students do not yet know. “I would actually like to go into journalism,” says Bosga cautiously, “but the Fries Dagblad, I don’t know about that.” Welp does find it useful to be able to speak Frisian in connection with his bachelor's degree in Art History. “I can now talk to Frisians about the art in their region. I think there is a lot of Delftware that comes from Friesland. But I also think Byzantine art is cool, so I don’t know yet.”
It is already getting dark when Duijff waves goodbye to the last Frisian students of that long day. “Goodbye, Famkes (girls in Frisian, ed.)!” he shouts through the hallway. He packs his already leaden bag with books on Frisian place names spread out on the table. “I also have two solpersteinen (the stumble stones placed at former homes of the Holocaust victims) in my backpack,” he explains, showing the two gold ones in his bag. “They are the first stones in Frisian, and I was one of the few who could translate the text for these Frisian victims,” Duijff states somewhat proudly.
The teacher likes to keep the language and its rich history alive, whether it’s through a Frisian dictionary, historical translations, or in his classes, which are full of enthusiastic students. Because at the end of the day, Duijff is nevertheless glad to be able to travel back to his Frisian home at the close of the PC Hoofthuis. “When I will, in a whyle, cycle through the richly patterned countryside in the evening, I thoroughly enjoy it. We have our own, beautiful landscape, our own culture, flag, and language. Ultimately, that’s why I still feel more Frisian than Dutch.”
