MA Multilingualism students Sara and Guillem win LC Award 2018!

A short while ago, we asked you on our social media accounts to vote for our Multilingualism master students Guillem Belmar and Sara Pinho as they were competing in the race for the LC Awards 2018. We are very happy to announce that Guillem and Sara won the LC Award in the academic category! Congratulations Guillem and Sara, we are so proud to have this level of excellence in our MA programme!

Frisian for Dutchies

When the Catalan Guillem and the Portugese Sara arrived in Fryslân for their studies, they were quite surprised with Dutch people who say they don’t understand Frisian – even though the languages appear to be somewhat similar. They were eager to know how much the Dutch actually understand of the Frisian language – in contrast to how much they think they understand – and decided to research the topic. For their research, they developed a test for native Dutch-speakers who don’t speak Frisian.

Interesting findings

So how much of the Frisian language do Dutch people actually understand? A surprising finding was that Dutch people are actually underestimating their ability to understand Frisian. Even though they thought it would be much too difficult for them, they generally scored high on the test.

Guillem and Sara conclude with an important message for the province of Fryslân: make Frisian a priority! By putting Frisian in the spotlight and making it more visible in everyday life, Fryslân will truly be able to reap the benefits of bilingualism. We totally agree!

Video and article in Leeuwarder Courant

Watch Sara and Guillem tell about their research in the video and read the article in the Leeuwarder Courant (in Dutch):