Anna speaking Bildts

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CC BY-SA 4.0

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This video was recorded by Guillem Belmar in the Netherlands and features Bildts speaker Anna Leijstra. Hailing from a varied background, Bildts is considered a dialect of Dutch hybridized with West Frisian, and regional to the province of Friesland. Some consider Bildts a creole language on the basis that workers relocating from Holland, Zealand, and Brabant in 1505 who spoke Low Franconian dialects mixed with local Frisian, with a creole as the result. Regardless, this places Bildts solidly on the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Today Bildts is spoken in the towns of Sint Annaparochie, Sint Jacobiparochie, Vrouwenparochie, Oudebildtzijl, Westhoek, and Nij Altoenae and shared by an estimated 8,500 speakers, although official records are scarce and reliable data is hard to come by. Like Stadsfries and other West Low Franconian dialects, Bildts has many commonalities with Old Dutch / Old Franconian and is more similar to Old Frisian than modern West Frisian.

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