The Objective and Subjective Ethnolinguistic Vitality of West Frisian: Promotion and Perception of a Minority Language in the Netherlands

The study presented here is the first contemporary investigation of the subjective compared to the objective ethnolinguistic vitality of West Frisian. West Frisian is a minority language spoken in the province of Fryslân, in the north of the Netherlands. The objective ethnolinguistic vitality of the language was established on the basis of policy documents and statistical data. To investigate the subjective ethnolinguistic vitality of the language, rich qualitative data were gathered by means of a questionnaire, which – due to low literacy rates – was administered to West Frisian speakers (N=1... Mehr ...