Het Boarnsterhim Corpus

Does Frisian change towards Dutch? That question has often been asked and some evidence seems to support that idea. This question is not new. To study whether the sound system of Frisian was really changing towards Dutch, The Boarnsterhim Corpus (henceforth BHC) was recorded in 1982–1984. The studies that followed from this suggest that the Frisian sound system was largely stable. In some respects, the distinction between Frisian and Dutch became even stronger. To further investigate whether this trend continues, the BHC2 is being recorded between 2017–2019. Recordings and analyses of four generations of speech will provide a unique the opportunity to investigate the stability, variation, and change of the Frisian sound system over 100 years.

In both periods, speakers of three generations of the same families were/are recorded: grandmother, mother, and daughter; or grandfather, father, and son. The two younger generations of the first period overlap with the oldest two generations of the second period. A special feature of this corpus is that 23 speakers were recorded in both periods; which enables a longitudinal study in language change and the comparison between panel and trend studies (or real time and apparent time studies).

All speakers were/are recorded twice. One time they were recorded in Frisian with a native interviewer to ensure informal Frisian speech and the other time they were recorded in Dutch. Each recording consists of 20 read sentences, a read story (2-3 minutes), and an interview of about 40 minutes about the speaker’s use of Frisian, language attitude, and daily life activities. In the BHC1, data were recorded on cassette tapes which were digitalized in 2016.

With the help of research assistants, interns, and volunteers, the data are annotated in Praat speech processing software. This separates the phrases, words, and sounds (with an accuracy of milliseconds). There are separate tiers (levels) for:

• orthography

• words

• phonemes

• phonetic realization

• deletion of speech sounds

• specific phonological processes

Purposes

This corpus is highly suitable for research in the following fields:

• bilingualism and code-switching

• long term language change

• especially in bilingualism
• and minority languages

• the phonetics and phonology of Frisian

• real-time vs. apparent time studies into language change

• studies into the development of reading competences of Frisian

• frequency effects in language

• language and ageing

• language attitude over time

• historiographic research

• anthropological research