Frisian is a West Germanic language  which is spoken by about 400,000 people in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. It is closely related to Dutch but also shows a number of striking similarities to English, especially at the lexical level.

Dutch is, however, the most important language for the development of Frisian. In the course of history the two languages kept coming into contact with each other. This linguistic contact was determined by the power relationship in the Low Countries and has been a great influence in the development of the present language situation in Friesland.

The province of Friesland is now multilingual. Alongside the national language (Dutch) and the regional language (Frisian) a number of dialects are also spoken, viz the dialects of Stellingwerf (a Saxon dialect), the area of Het Bildt (in the north west) and Town Frisian or Stedsk in the towns. In some Frisian cities there is in the language among the youth also the influence of English, Surinam, Turkish and Arab words