The West Frisian can mean:
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The West Frisian dialect (Dutch: West-Fries) is a Dutch dialect spoken in the contemporary West Friesland region, Wieringen, Wieringermeer, the coastal area from Den Helder to Castricum, and the island of Texel. It is a Hollandic Dutch dialect but is influenced by Frisian (a group of languages distinct from Dutch). It is not to be confused with the language of the Friesland Province internationally indicated with the name West Frisian language (in Dutch simply Fries) although they are related to each other.
The dialect in itself is not a fixed one, as there is a diverse number of subdialects (sometimes referred to as the West Frisian dialect group) that consists of some widely spoken regional dialects, namely Wierings in Wieringen, Tessels or Texels in Texel and the dialect of Vlieland known as Vlielands, which has fallen into disuse. The smaller regions and villages, such as Zijpe, Andijk, Enkhuizen and Schagen, have some distinct differences between them. Slightly more different from the rest of the group is Derps, the dialect of the village Egmond aan Zee.
West Frisian, or simply Frisian (Frysk; Dutch: Fries [ˈfris]) is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages.
The name "West Frisian" is only used outside the Netherlands, to distinguish this language from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian spoken in Germany. Within the Netherlands, however, "West Frisian" refers to the West Frisian language of the Dutch language while the West Frisian language is almost always just called "Frisian" (in Dutch, Fries for the Frisian language and Westfries for the Dutch dialect.) The unambiguous name used for the Frisian language by linguists in the Netherlands is Westerlauwers Fries [ˈʋɛstərˌlʌu̯ərs ˈfris] (West Lauwers Frisian), the Lauwers being a border stream that separates the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen.
Most speakers of West Frisian live in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. This province was formerly officially called Friesland, but officially changed its name to Fryslân in 1997. The province has 643,000 inhabitants (2005); of these, 94% can understand spoken Frisian, 74% can speak Frisian, 75% can read Frisian, and 27% can write it.