Frison de Saterland

Saterland Frisian (Seeltersk) is the sole surviving descendant of medieval East Frisian (Old East Frisian), spoken by ~2.5K people in three villages of the Saterland municipality in Lower Saxony, Germany — Ramsloh (Roomelse), Strücklingen (Strukelje) and Scharrel (Skäddel). It is preserved here because Saterland was historically a moor-island isolated by inhospitable bogs from the surrounding Low German speech area. The language survived the 1500-year medieval expansion-and-loss cycle that erased East Frisian elsewhere along the German North Sea coast. Recognized as a regional language under the 1998 European Charter; UNESCO classes it as severely endangered. Distinct from West Frisian (fy, Netherlands) and North Frisian (frr, Schleswig-Holstein).