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West Germanic æ¯ in the dialect of North Holland: a Frisian myth Arjen Versloot, Fryske Akademy

The normal expression of West Germanic æ¯, also known as Germanic ¯e 1, is /a:/ in Standard Dutch: schaap /sxa:p/ ‘sheep’, braden /bRa:dcn/ ‘to steak’. The correspondences in the other West are English sheep, to breed, Modern West Frisian skiep /ski.cp/, briede /bri.cdc/, High German Schaf /•a:f/, braten /bRa:tcn/. This small overview reveals the opposition that exists in the development of West Germanic æ¯ between the socalled Germanic languages English and Frisian ( and /ske:p/ and /bre:da(n)/) and the continental , like Dutch and High German

The Dutch dialects of Holland benorth Amsterdam (see map) have forms like skeep /ske.ip/ and brede /bre.idc/. By that, they seem to be on the side of the North Sea Germanic languages. As this area was a Frisian speaking region in the Middle Ages, this phenomenon is often attributed to the Frisian substratum, where North Hollandic /e.i/ is considered to be the direct descendant of North Sea Germanic /e:/ in these words.

Here it will be advocated that the mid-open front vowels in these words with West Germanic æ¯ are the result of a much more recent development of the 16th and 17th century, where /a:/ - possibly [æ:] - was fronted and partly closed in Hollandic dialects. This development was followed in West Frisian, where Middle Frisian /a:/ (mainly from Germanic /au/) developed into /I.c/ or /e.i/ in the same period.