Written by Dyami Millarson

Today is my birthday and rather than receiving gifts from others, I would like to give a gift to all of you: I hereby present the first Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary in the English language, published today as a freely available ebook. Click here to view the new dictionary. The dictionary is already copyrighted under Dutch law. Please refrain from redistributing and copying it without permission. However, the ISBN of the dictionary has not yet been purchased. I need to raise 100 Euro (currently about 105 USD) for that. Obtaining an ISBN is important because when the dictionary has an ISBN, it will be catalogued and the dictionary will consequently gain more exposure to interested individuals. This article is therefore also a fundraiser. If you want to support our Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary, you can scroll down to find information on how to donate.

Hindeloopen Frisian is an archaic Frisian language spoken in the harbour city of Hindeloopen since time immemorial. Hindeloopen Frisian has come under severe pressure from the outside world in recent years. Its little sister language, Molkwerum Frisian, already died in the 19th century and the death of the related Molkwerum Frisian serves as a stark warning for Hindeloopen Frisian. This dictionary is definitely a contribution to the survival of Hindeloopen Frisian as it will make the Hindeloopen Frisian language accessible to English-speaking language learners for the first time, and I ought to stress that we strongly believe in making this dictionary freely available to all as that is the best way to promote vulnerable languages. Additional materials that will be useful to language students will be produced at a later date, as the improvement of the Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary is the current priority.

The concept behind this Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary is that it will be improved over time. The decision was made to publish the dictionary as an ebook so that it can easily be edited. We therefore also decided to make the dictionary already available even though it is currently clearly in unfinished form. Ever since publishing my extensive article on Wangerooge Frisian, I have had the idea that it is fine to publish things in unfinished form since I can continue editing it anyway; this is an added benefit of modern technology that should be utilised for the languages we are studying, as the need for publication clearly outweighs the need for perfection. After all, perfection can gradually be achieved by continuing to work on each project and as already said, modern technology offers the opportunity to continue editing after publication. Currently the dictionary spans only a few hundred pages, but it is to be expected that it will eventually span more than a thousand pages and if given enough time, thousands of pages. The growth of the dictionary is only a matter of time since editing can continue indefinitely.

Finally, a very important aspect of this new Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary is that it is open to input from the community and all interested parties. Everyone may contribute.

Support Our Work

If you want to support the Hindeloopen Frisian dictionary, you can use one of the donation options below. We need to raise 100 Euro for purchasing an ISBN. The dictionary is freely available to all because that is the best for promoting Hindeloopen Frisian.

Every small donation matters.

You can find our payment options below.

If you want to make a donation via wire transfer, these are the details you need:

Account holder: Stichting Operatie X 
IBAN: BE03 9673 0092 5284
BIC: TRWIBEB1XXX
Bank address: Avenue Louise 54, Room S52, Brussels, 1050, Belgium

If you want to make a donation via PayPal, you can use this link: https://paypal.me/dmillarson

PayRequest is a secure way you can use to make a donation with credit card: https://payrequest.me/dyamimillarson