A while ago in 2024, I traveled to Berlin. Initially intent on locking down the Berliner German translation of Le petit prince, I found myself in a Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, combing through their languages section. In addition to the Standard German (for foreigners) and foreign language books (for German speakers) that adorned the shelves, my eyes fixated on the shelf stocked with books covering the various dialects, Mundart, and other varieties of the German language.

Naturally, as one might expect from a shelf like this, I found more well known ones like Bavarian, a language I have previously covered. I also found more familiar ones, books on Viennese German, Austrian German and Swiss German in general, and Swabian German. However, I did not manage to find my target book, and instead, checked out with a book on Plattdeutsch or Low German, and the translation of Le petit prince in one of the Low German varieties, called Oostfreesk Platt, or East Frisian Low German.

East Frisian Low German is predominantly spoken in, well, East Frisia or East Friesland, a region situated in the state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) in Germany. Despite being commonly referred to as Ostfriesisch (East Frisian) today, this particular variety of Low German should not be confused with the East Frisian language, which is part of the Frisian languages, and is spoken by around 2000 people in the Saterland region in Lower Saxony.

Additionally, East Frisian Low German has its own set of subvarieties that differ in vocabulary and pronunciations for words, such as Harlinger Platt having a different word for “to speak” or “to talk” than many other East Frisian Low German varieties, schnacken, in contrast to proten, much like the Dutch praten. Together, East Frisian Low German has around a couple hundred thousand native speakers, but as younger generations are less likely to learn this language from their parents, and it is not taught in formal education, Ethnologue classifies this particular variety of Low German as “endangered”.

Looking into the books I got on Oostfreesk Platt, I started to realise that the written form looks a lot like the Dutch language. This is perhaps due to the use of doubled vowels to indicate long vowels in closed syllables, according to the orthography used by the Ostfriesische Landschaft. Examples of this include Boord (table), Määrt (March), and Buur (farmer). However, long vowels may also be written as “vowel + h”, as in German, like Stohl (chair) and sehn (to see).

That is, until you realise that Dutch does not use the umlaut, but more rather the diaresis in its written form, while Oostfreesk Platt, like German, uses the umlaut. The first similarity I found is the rather common use of the diminutive suffix -tje or -je. One example is lüttje (little), which is in itself a diminutive form of the word lütt (little). These suffixes are also found in female given names such as Antje, Geertje, and Geske, which are diminutive forms of Anna, Gerda, and Gertrud respectively. These diminutive forms are also used as independent names, much like how English names like Timmy and Andy are used as independent names.

A more salient pattern is, like other Low German varieties, Oostfreesk Platt did not undergo the High German consonant shift. Thus, its sound patterns are also fairly similar to those varieties found in the Netherlands, for the case of Dutch and Frisian. These sound patterns may be reflected in the Johannes Sass orthography for Oostfreesk Platt, which is subsequently adopted by the Ostfrisische Landschaft. Examples include twee (two), which is twee in Dutch, but zwei in Standard German.

The other pattern I observed was something that is more related to English. Some forms of the pronouns in Oostfreesk Platt have actually undergone metathesis, wherein two sounds in a word are interchanged. For example, what is ihr (her) in Standard German is hör in Oostfreesk Platt, and similarly, the Standard German ihm and ihn (him) correspond to hüm in Oostfreesk Platt. Try pronouncing the Oostfreesk Platt counterparts. Does it sound weirdly similar to the English counterparts?

As mentioned previously in the introduction to Low German as a whole, Oostfreesk Platt does not use the genitive case, with possessor-possession relationships typically expressed using dative or oblique constructions like von. Additionally, the ge- prefix used to form German participles like er hat gesagt (he has said) is not present in Oostfreesk Platt. An example includes he harr seggt (he has said).

There are two competing orthographies to write Oostfreesk Platt, one which is more widely used by speakers adopted by the Ostfriesisches Landschaft which is developed based on the Sass orthography, and another one which is a more recent development by Jungfräiske Mäinskup. In the latter, there are more letters with diacritics that are used to better reflect certain sounds that might be ambiguous in the Sass orthography, such as how the [ɔ] sound is reflected. Such letters include ‘â ê ğ î ó ô û’. Some examples of differences include twee in the Sass orthography, and twäj in the Jungfräiske Mäinskup one.

Both organisations mentioned have developed course materials for those interested in learning East Frisian Low German. However, take note that the courses offered by the Jungfräiske Mäinskup uses their own orthography separate from that used by the Ostfrisische Landschaft. There is even an app developed by the Ostfriesisches Landschaft to teach this very variety of Low German, called PlattinO. It is available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, so feel free to check it out. I might do a review of this application at some point out of pure interest. Furthermore, there is an online dictionary hosted by the Ostfriesisches Landschaft that translates between Hochdeutsch and Ostfriesisches Plattdeutsch. All of these resources are generally available in German, so perhaps you might draw some meaningful comparisons between Oostfreesk Platt and German as you learn. In the making of this introduction, these resources (and De lüttje Prinz) were consulted as part of my readings.

Further Reading

Ostfriesische Landschaft (2010) Schreibregeln für das ostfrisische Niederdeutsch.

Reershemius, G. (2004) Niederdeutsch in Ostfriesland. Zwischen Sprachkontakt, Sprachveränderung und Sprachwechsel, Steiner, Stuttgart.