Stimmen fan Fryslân: Recording the linguistic landscape of Fryslân

June 1, 2017
Events

In 2018, Fryslân will become a real language laboratory! Next year, Leeuwarden-Fryslân will be the European Capital of Culture of 2018.  The partnership Lân fan Taal is an important part of this event. Throughout 2018, language will be celebrated with activities, artworks, performances, exhibitions and spatial installations in Leeuwarden and Friesland.

Stimmen fan Fryslân

The project “Stimmen fan Fryslân” (Voices of Fryslân) is one of the projects of Lân fan Taal for the European Capital of Culture 2018. Dr. Nanna Haug Hilton, Assistant Professor of Sociolinguistics at our department, is the initiator of this project.

The Frisian language has many variants and dialects, like most languages in the world. In fact, almost everyone is multilingual to some degree. This is an intriguing phenomenon that the University of Groningen wants to investigate during the project Stimmen fan Fryslân. The goal of this project is to provide a snapshot of the linguistic landscape of Fryslân at the start of the 21st century. The project is inspired by the British project “Voices Recordings”, in which as many varieties as possible of British speech were recorded.

App and website

The central element of Stimmen fan Fryslân is an extensive smartphone app with an associated website. The app lets you discover various languages and different varieties of Frisian. You can also record and add spoken language yourself. Furthermore, the app and website allow you to discover and share knowledge about multilingualism within an online community, read blogs or play a language game. Great for language enthusiasts, language experts and teachers!

Lan fan Taal

Lân fan Taal has come into existence as the result of a collaboration between Afûk, Explore the North, Fryske Akademy, The Municipality of Leeuwarden, Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden, Neushoorn, Omrop Fryslân, The Province of Friesland, the University of Groningen, Tresoar and Tryater. For more information, go to the website of Lan fan Taal. The app and website of Stimmen fan Fryslân will be launched in (late) summer of 2017.

Read the article about the language projects and Stimmen fan Fryslân in DURF!