North Frisian Language Institute under threat

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday April 21, 2003 22:39 by Pat c

Behind the dykes of the flat, northernmost German province of Schleswig-Holstein, the Frisian minority struggles for the future of it’s language. The North Frisian Institute has just published last year's financial results and this year's budget, and while last year showed a deficit of 28,000 Euro, this year's budget has an increased deficit of 36,000 Euro – even though one part-time staff member has already been laid off earlier this year. 'We have to save so much that the Institute will suffer and I do not know whether it will be able to recover,' says Tede Boysen, chairperson of the institute, to Eurolang. The Language Institute provides books and educational materials as well as conducting academic research and is the sole institution in the language area to provide such work. The North Frisian minority is estimated to be 10.000 active speakers with nine different dialects.

This article was originally written by Brigitte Alfter from Eurolang.

The Institute will have to cut back staff to only four full-time positions. Currently thirteen staff members share five full-time positions.

Public funding, mainly from the province of Schleswig-Holstein but also from the county of Nordfriesland, Denmark and the city of Bredsted, has been frozen for years, while wages and costs continue to grow. Until last year book-sales or inheritances covered most of the gap, but as there is too little funding to produce books, the income on book-sales has dropped, Boysen explains.

Funding from projects is hardly an option, as it usually requires extra work, which the Institute in its current situation is not able to provide for.

Funding levels have also been frozen for the other minorities of the Danish-German border region: Danes, Frisians and Sinti and Roma in Germany as well as Germans in Denmark.

However, the Frisians are worst off, according to Tede Boysen, who said that: 'other minorities have to save money as well. But they have larger staffs. If we compare the situation to the Danish or German minority, they would have to lay off several hundred staff members – they would cry out loud,' he explains.

Another severe difficulty is the specialisation of the Institute. While the Danish or German minority can ‘import’ staff members from the mother countries, very few academics have the historical and linguistic knowledge of the Northern Frisian language.

The Institute has in recent years focused on providing educational material for children in kindergartens and primary schools. Future plans are for educational material for adults, according to the director of the Institute, Professor Thomas Steensen.

'We can see a special demand among adults and students. We aim for providing material for a language class according to the most modern methods, amongst other things providing material on CD-Rom,' he said.

On this question the North Frisians intend to cooperate with other minorities to gather experiences. However, the special situation of the North Frisian language and its nine dialects means that learning materials have to come from the North Frisians themselves.

'We cannot import educational material from the core country like the Danish minority can, we have to produce it ourselves,' adds Steensen.