De Friese Meertaligheid Sociolinguistisch Onderzocht

A sketch is given of the Frisian language situation. It is estimated that roughly 6/10 of the population have Frisian as the language of the home, 3/10 Dutch and 1/10 a regional dialect. Recent developments in Frisian society have led to a weaker situation for Frisian. A number of factors are mentioned: industrialization, mobility, education, media and changing social norms. A problem is whether the direction of these forces can be changed. Most promising is the language policy of the provincial administration. The national government does not have a consistent language-policy. Perhaps some positive influence may be gained from European level policies. After these introductory comments research-projects are discussed which have empirically investigated (some aspect of) the language situation. In all 60 small and large, well-known and less known projects are catego-rized on the basis of different characteristics: - language in which reported - period in which done; - main topic (with further specifications); - reasons to do such projects. The next section gives an outline of somewhat larger and generally more scientifically based projects, which are being done at the moment. These are: - a survey of language use in special education; - an investigation of goals for Frisian in primary schools; - a study of the social factors in certain phonological changes; - an empirical investigation of interference; - a plan to study language differences as an interview-effect; - a large scale population survey trying to answer the (well-known) question: "Who speaks what language to whom and why?". The final conclusion is that more research can and needs to be done.