Amrum North Frisian

Amrum Frisian, also known as Öömrang, is the dialect of the North Frisian language spoken on the island of Amrum in the North Frisia region of Germany. Öömrang refers to the Öömrang Frisian name of Amrum, which is Oomram. Alongside the Fering, Söl'ring, and Heligolandic dialects, it is part of the insular group of North Frisian dialects, and it bares a close resemblance to Fering. Öömrang is spoken by approximately one-third of Amrum's 2,300 inhabitants.

Amrum Frisian
Öömrang
A stone displaying a stanza from "Min Öömrang Lun", a traditional song from Amrum island
Native toGermany
RegionAmrum, Nordfriesland
Native speakers
(undated figure of ca. 800)
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologamru1234
Linguasphere2-ACA-dba[1]
North Frisian dialects

Characteristics
  • Differentiation between long and short vowels by doubling of the vowel letter (e.g., lun [land, country] and skuul [school])
  • Use of numerous diphthongs and one triphthong, "uai" (e.g. spuai [to tell fortunes])
  • Frequent use of umlauts
  • Final "w" is pronounced like a short "u" (e.g. leew [dear, sweet])
  • The "r" is rolled (as in Italian)

Personal and family names

Personal names on Amrum are still greatly influenced by Frisian elements to this day. Notably, hypocorisms and names with two elements are common. Early borrowings were made from the Danish language and the Christianisation of the North Frisians around 1000 A.D. brought a modest influence of Christian and biblical names. In the Age of Sail, Dutch and West Frisian forms became popular.[2]

Family names were usually patronymic, i.e. they were individually created as genitives from the father's given name. Contrary to the Scandinavian Petersen or Petersson, meaning "Peter's son", an Öömrang name like Peters means "of Peter". This practice was eventually prohibited by the Danish Crown in 1828.[2]

Usage

Lars von Karstedt has illustrated the ominous situation of Öömrang today. The usage of Öömrang is now restricted in home domain. It has lost its function in public communication to German and is only spoken in the households with elderly native speakers of Öömrang. One of the biggest driving forces of the language shift is the change of economic structure brought by the tourism industry. The tourists from across Germany crowded into the small island of Amrum and have quickly taken up the limited housing. Consequently, the rent rapidly increased, driving a lot of the local youngsters out to live in major cities in mainland Germany. Both the influx of English-speaking or German-speaking tourists and tourism employees and the loss of young native speakers are causing drastic decline of the dialect.[3]

References
  1. "o" (PDF). The Linguasphere Register. p. 235. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 August 2014. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
  2. Faltings, Volkert F., ed. (1985). Kleine Namenkunde für Föhr und Amrum (in German). Hamburg: Helmut Buske. ISBN 3-87118-680-5.
  3. Granadillo, Tania and Orcutt-Gachiri, Heidi A., eds. (2011). Ethnographic contributions to the study of endangered languages. with a foreword by Jane H. Hill; and an afterword by Ofelia Zepeda. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. pp. 155–158. ISBN 9780816526994.


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