West Frisian language

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "West Frisian language" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

West Frisian
Frisian
Frysk Westerlauwersk Frysk
Pronunciation	[frisk], [ˈʋɛstr̩ˌlɔu.əs(k) ˈfrisk]
Native to	Netherlands
Region	Friesland
Ethnicity	West Frisians
Native speakers	470,000 (2001 census)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglo-Frisian Frisian West Frisian Westlauwers–Terschellings West Frisian
Writing system	Latin (West Frisian alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Netherlands Friesland
Regulated by	Fryske Akademy
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fy
ISO 639-2	fry
ISO 639-3	fry
Glottolog	west2354
ELP	West Frisian
Linguasphere	52-ACA-b
Present-day distribution West Frisian languages, in the Netherlands
Frisian is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

West Frisian, or simply Frisian (West Frisian: Frysk [frisk] or Westerlauwersk Frysk; Dutch: Fries [fris], also Westerlauwers Fries), is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the Frisian languages.

In the study of the evolution of English, West Frisian is notable as being the most closely related foreign tongue to the various dialects of Old English spoken across the Heptarchy, these being part of the Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic family.^{[citation needed]}