The Frysk Akademy and the Universiteit van Amsterdam Department of Frisian are looking specifically at the trilingual situation of the Frisian emigrants and their children. To what extent do the Frisian emigrants (still) speak Frisian? To what extent have older generations been able to pass on their mother-tongue (Frisian) to the next? Do first-generation emigrants still today speak Dutch? To what degree has the language of the new homeland displaced the mother-tongue? These are the questions central to this specific research subsection.

The language research is being conducted by drs Gemma Bakker. She studied Communications in the Faculty of Literature at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, concluding with a thesis concerning Dutch emigrants in South Africa and New Zealand. She subsequently carried out research amongst Dutch and Flemish emigrants in New Zealand commissioned by the foundation SINT and with subsidy from the Dutch Taalunie.

Information collection is through the completion of written questionnaires and verbal interviews. Prior to the ‘Simmer 2000’ a detailed, written questionnaire was sent to more than six thousand Frisian emigrants and six months after the event another written follow-up questionnaire was distributed. In addition, 120 in-depth personal interviews were conducted during the event. These were recorded on tape and will be taken up in the Corpus Gesproken Fries.