I was planning to add Frisian common names of organisms which are found in my region (province of Frisia (Fryslân). I found a good list for common names in a book by the main local nature organisation. The problem is that there are two lexicons, ‘Frisian’ and ‘West-Frisian’. West-Frisian is the English name of the second official language of the Netherlands, and is spoken in the Dutch province of Fryslân. In Dutch and Frisian this language is known as ‘Fries’ and ‘Frysk’ respectively. There are also areas in Germany and Denmark where Frisian is spoken on a smaller scale, but these isolated groups have quite a few differences. To add to the confusion, there is also the region of ‘West-Friesland’ in the tip of Northern Holland. Here a Dutch dialect named ‘West-Fries’ (West-Frisian dialect) is spoken.
There are two relevant lexicons on this website, ‘Frisian’ and ‘West-Frisian’. I did not find a way to verify what the contents of these lexicons were. Are they created for the same purpose? Or is ‘West-Frisian’ meant for the West-Frisian dialect? Then I would suggest renaming it to ‘West-Frisian dialect’. On a side note, I saw there are some very big lexicons like ‘Arabic’ still named in English instead of Dutch (would be ‘Arabisch’).
My main question is, to which lexicon should I add the names? To ‘Frisian’ including region specifics to the area of the province? This would be quite inconvenient since the Frisian languages in Germany and Denmark are quite isolated and distinct. Or to ‘West-Frisian’ to differ from the ‘East Frisian’ spoken in Germany and ‘North Frisian’ spoken in Denmark?
My main suggestion is, to have four lexicons, ‘West-Frisian’ for the language in the Netherlands, and for the other varieties ‘East Frisian’, ‘North Frisian’, and ‘West Frisian dialect’ with fitting local translations like ‘Fries’ for the language in the Netherlands and ‘West-Fries’ for the dialect.
Het is niet vreemd dat de naam “West-Fries” nogal eens verwarring oplevert. Wat in Nederland als ‘Fries’ wordt aangeduid, wordt in het buitenland ‘West-Fries’ genoemd ter onderscheiding van het ‘Oost-Fries’ dat in Duitsland (Ostfriesland) gesproken wordt, hoewel dat overigens sinds de middeleeuwen niet meer taalkundig tot het Fries gerekend kan worden en sindsdien een regionale aanduiding is geworden voor het Nedersaksische dialect ter plaatse. De Nederlandse begripstermen “West-Fries” en “Westfries” mogen dus niet gelijkgesteld worden met het Engelse Western Frisian en het Duitse West-Friesisch , verwarrende begripsnamen die in deze talen gebruikt worden voor het Nederlandse begrip Friese taal annex het Westerlauwers Fries (zie onder West-Fries voor deze en andere begrippen samengesteld uit de woorden ‘west’ en ‘Fries’). Regionaal-geografische en taalkundige aanduidingen zijn in de loop van eeuwen gaan verschuiven en men mag daarom de huidige begripsbepalingen niet als rechtstreeks afgeleid van de historische begrippen zien.
The list features almost every bird, plant, mushroom and mammal endemic to the province, but I wanted to start with the birds and mammals. I did a quick check on common and iconic birds and mammals, like crow, roe deer, grey seal, blackwit, etcetera but none had either a name on ‘Frisian’ or ‘West-Frisian’ so I think I’m going to request the removal of ‘Frisian’ and the Dutch translation ‘Fries’ for ‘West-Frisian’.
Update after seeing the list of optilete, I think it would be best to find a solution to add these automatically to ‘West-Frisian’.
The list I have here is the one included in the Natuurgids from It Fryske Gea.
Update (28 feb 2021): I could not find any organism for both Lexicons, therefore I have decided to use the technically correct one (West-Frisian), and I encourage others to use the West-Frisian in the Netherlands, Saterland Frisian in Germany and Northern Frisian in Denmark respectively. Yesterday I’ve added the mammals endemic to the province manually, but optilete provided me with some instructions to prepare the sources he kindly provided for automatic upload, which I will work on the coming days. This will save a lot of time especially in the bird and plant department. Further, I will propose a good Dutch translation of languages in the list of lexicons, and the removal of generic ‘Frisian’ in a relevant board, to reduce the confusion.