ECMI Minorities Blog. Football and minority language(s) online: The case of sc Heerenveen in Fryslân
*** The blog posts are prepared by the authors in their personal capacity. The views expressed in the blog posts are the sole responsibility of the authors concerned and do not necessarily reflect the view of the European Centre for Minority Issues. ***
Author: Jasmijn van Beek I https://doi.org/10.53779/GGGG2222
* Jasmijn van Beek is a linguistics student at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She has a background in theoretical linguistics and is currently in the process of obtaining her MA in Multilingualism, a program centred around multilingual realities. In a previous project, she researched Frisian-Dutch code switching on Frisian radio and presented her findings at the 2024 Mercator Conference. She is aspiring to become a language equality advocate and policymaker.
Introduction
When it comes to the interaction of football and minoritized languages, Fryslân (Dutch: Friesland) emerges as an intriguing playing field. For one, Fryslân is the only province in the Netherlands to have a co-official language, namely (West) Frisian. Fryslân’s currently most successful football club, sc Heerenveen, proudly displays the language as well as other markers of Frisian identity. This is also true of its social media presence. But how exactly does it use Frisian there, and how do its supporters respond? In this blog post we examine sc Heerenveen’s PR policy concerning Frisian on its social media and website in order to place it within a broader online Frisian context. We concluded that sc Heerenveen uses Frisian in order to connect with its Frisian supporter base, potentially creating a relatively uncommon space for Frisian online in the process; but that the club still has room to increase the (online) visibility of Frisian.
Background
Frisian
West Frisian (often referred to simply as Frisian) is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. The population of Fryslân numbers some 660,000. Most can understand (93%) and speak (67%) Frisian; yet less than half can read (46%) the standard Frisian orthography and only few can write (16%) it. This has contributed to Frisian being mainly a spoken language.
In addition to this, the presence of Frisian in public spaces is very limited. In Leeuwarden (Frisian: Ljouwert), the capital city of Fryslân, Frisian is seen exceedingly rarely, appearing on only 3-5% of signs there; and even in more Frisian-speaking areas of the province (Fig. 1), Dutch is used more often on signage than Frisian.
This minimal presence of written Frisian translates to online spaces, though to a limited degree. Research involving young Frisian speakers suggests that they use the language less frequently compared to Dutch on social media. Furthermore, it appears that young Frisian speakers are more likely to choose Frisian as the language of communication in private online conversation (such as on WhatsApp) than in a public context (such as on Facebook or Instagram). This is in part because on public social media it is harder to identify the degree to which the audience of any given post speaks Frisian.
Sc Heerenveen
Initially founded as Athleta in 1920, sc Heerenveen has grown to become a symbol of Frisian identity. Even quite early on, the club touted its Frisian-ness by designing its kit based on the Frisian flag, and its fans have regularly sung the Frisian anthem since at least the 1940s. A pivotal moment came when the now ex-chairman of the club, Riemer van der Velde, took charge in 1983 and made the club’s Frisian identity even more salient. Nowadays, its website reads “sc Heerenveen is Fryslân and Fryslân is sc Heerenveen” (note: all translations from Frisian and Dutch are by the author), and even outside the province sc Heerenveen is often referred to as ‘the Frisians’.
Sc Heerenveen’s Frisian identity is also related to its rurality. The club originates from the town of Heerenveen (Frisian: It Hearrenfean), situated roughly 30 kilometres south of Leeuwarden in the Fryslân countryside, home to a population of around 30,000. In general, Frisian is more common in rural areas of the province than in cities like Leeuwarden, and this difference also extends to identity. Relevant in this regard is sc Heerenveen’s fierce rivalry with the second largest club in Fryslân, Cambuur, which hails from Leeuwarden: as a result, Cambuur has defined itself as urban and sc Heerenveen itself as rural, thereby attracting Frisian rural supporters from all across Fryslân.
Research question and methodology
This blog post positions itself among earlier contributions to the ECMI Minorities Blog in the field of minorities and football, for example among non-kin state contexts in general or the Finnish-Swedish context in particular. Because of its status as the Frisian football club, we analysed how sc Heerenveen uses Frisian in its media/PR strategy, particularly on social media, as well as how its fans use Frisian within the digital environment surrounding sc Heerenveen. For that purpose, we examined the social media feeds and websites of sc Heerenveen and official and unofficial fan pages across a period of approximately one month (from 1 February to 3 March 2025). By taking a total of 418 screenshots, we recorded instances of Frisian along with other signs that may index a Frisian identity, and subsequently applied an elementary image-based qualitative analysis to them. In addition, we interviewed Frisian language promoter and expert Mirjam Vellinga from Afûk and sent a questionnaire to marketing and PR staff at sc Heerenveen.
The sc Heerenveen website
Sc Heerenveen’s official website, sc-heerenveen.nl, gives us an initial idea of how the club uses Frisian to communicate with fans and stakeholders. The website does not offer a wholly Frisian version; instead, the majority of the website is in Dutch. Still, Frisian is present on the website to a limited degree. For example, the page on the club’s social efforts has the slogan Wy tinke oan moarn (we keep tomorrow in mind), and the club’s official merch page sells a Dutch-Frisian calendar, although all other merchandise is seemingly in Dutch. Notably, the 2024-2028 strategic plan Koers nei Europa (‘Course to Europe’) is also titled in Frisian and contains a number of Frisian words. These are mostly used symbolically: words such as mienskip ‘community’, tegearre ‘together’, and wolkom ‘welcome’ appear repeatedly, presumably to emphasize the club’s commitment to its Frisian community. As we will see, this pattern of using Frisian sparingly but in highly visible locations and in culturally and emotionally significant ways appears to be a recurring strategy in sc Heerenveen’s PR.
Sc Heerenveen on social media
Sc Heerenveen has a broad social media presence, encompassing active pages on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. Posts were generally shared universally across platforms, with only slightly different captions and photos: in other words, sc Heerenveen has made its social media strategy relatively consistent across platforms. Still, some exceptions to this strategy exist and include Dutch-language match updates on X and the use of formal second person pronouns (‘u’) on LinkedIn. Interestingly, as for its online following, the media staff at sc Heerenveen noted that “the majority of our followers is not from Fryslân”.
Broadly speaking, Frisian was less common than Dutch. Two typical examples of a post in Frisian can be seen in Fig. 2: posts with a short caption (thús – ‘(at) home’; tegearre – ‘together’), which were accompanied by images of fans in the home stadium or of the players celebrating. As with the use of Frisian on the website, these captions typically invoke a message related to the community or home.
When commenting on these captions, Mirjam Vellinga noted: “I do think it’s a certain marker of identity. It’s a matter of emotion, and the ‘we belong together’-idea. There’s a lot of ús ‘us’, and allegearre ‘everyone’, those ‘signal words’, in order to create a sort of ‘us’-feeling.”
Our analysis may also suggest that this attitude towards Frisian can be manifested as an attitude of permanence. We remarked that the Dutch match update tweets stand in contrast with the partially Frisian calendar: the former is fleeting, only relevant for a few minutes, whereas the latter is visible for an entire year. In this way, sc Heerenveen may be connecting the longevity of Frisian or club identity directly to use of the Frisian language.
On the other hand, Dutch is usually chosen for longer posts, for example those with news about the club. Frisian businesses typically choose to use Dutch for their signage. Mirjam Vellinga remarks that this extends to online PR: “If you look at the big picture of Frisian on social media, it’s not very visible, and that’s especially true when it’s from a business or an institution.” The dominant, standard position of Dutch in sc Heerenveen’s social media therefore fits within the norm of social media in Fryslân as a whole.
Interestingly, we did not find any posts that were written fully bilingually (e.g. first in Frisian and then in Dutch), although there were posts with both languages present (Fig. 3). Mirjam Vellinga, too, highlighted the issue of bilingual posts while also raising a comparative perspective: “There aren’t many businesses or institutions with a language policy of, for example, publishing everything bilingually on social media; something you see much more of in, for example, the Basque Country or Wales.”
Her next comments were very interesting: “I think that’s why in proportion it matters more when a club like sc Heerenveen does use written Frisian. […] I think it strengthens the identity of sc Heerenveen more so than if it had been very normal to use it." Our correspondence with the sc Heerenveen staff confirmed this: according to them, they “try to use Frisian words […] to stay unique in our statements”. Moreover, though we did not find any within the timespan mentioned above, the staff at sc Heerenveen informed us that (longer) all-Frisian posts are sometimes used to advertise matches against nearby rival clubs “to emphasize even more that we are the club of Fryslân”. Sc Heerenveen thus uses written Frisian to distinguish itself as uniquely Frisian.
We saw other languages used besides Dutch and Frisian as well, most prominently English, but also—for example—Norwegian in a post congratulating a Norwegian player on his birthday. These posts further illustrate that the multilingual language use on sc Heerenveen’s social media is very fluid and can be tailored to the content and the audience of a post.
Overall, sc Heerenveen’s language policy on social media seems to be influenced by a number of factors. Central are the positions of Dutch and Frisian—Dutch occupies a majority, dominant position within the club’s PR, and functions as the ‘default’ option; Frisian, on the other hand, seems to play a role in the club’s aim to engage its Frisian supporters. It is visible when the club wants to connect itself to the Frisian community, to emotions of belonging, or to ideas of longevity. In this way, the club uses Frisian in its PR in order to contribute to a broader strategy of positioning itself as a key part of Frisian identity, and in that process it creates an environment that supports the use of Frisian online, which we will discuss in the next section.
Frisian use by fans online
Sc Heerenveen could not exist without its fans, many of whom are speakers of Frisian. As such, we were also interested in the use of Frisian in the comments under sc Heerenveen’s posts and on fan pages.
At first glance, it became apparent that the comments, too, contain more Dutch than Frisian. This makes sense since, as mentioned above, most of sc Heerenveen’s social media following is from outside the province. We also noticed certain differences between social media platforms in this regard. Notably, Instagram users seemed to choose Frisian relatively rarely compared to—for example—users on Facebook. In fact, we even came across Instagram posts from sc Heerenveen that had more comments in Arabic than in Frisian. In part, this may be due to the expectations associated with Instagram accounts: they are often viewed as a place to present a polished version of oneself, and a low-status language such as Frisian would therefore be used less often, especially when many Frisian speakers are not confident in their Frisian writing proficiency.
As for the way Frisian is used, there is a clear difference between club and fans. In general, it seems that commenters are much less concerned with using Frisian for identity construction—though this does still happen—and rather use it simply because it is their main day-to-day language. Whereas sc Heerenveen overwhelmingly and strategically uses Frisian for short, recognizable symbolic phrases, commenters do so only to a limited degree. We found many longer sentences and even some short casual conversations in Frisian among fan comments and posts (Fig. 4). Mirjam Vellinga notes that such elaborate and casual usage of written Frisian is a quite recent phenomenon: “Frisian is being used more and more often on social media, especially [privately] between individuals. […] People suddenly realize: hey, we always speak Frisian with one another; maybe we should also chat online with one another in Frisian instead of in Dutch”.
As mentioned above, and as Mirjam Vellinga implies, this use of Frisian is less pronounced on public social media platforms. Still, we found many comments in Frisian, many of which were written quite elaborately, despite sc Heerenveen’s significant non-Frisian online following. Therefore, we would argue that sc Heerenveen’s unique use of written Frisian, even if it is limited, creates a context and a space which allows its Frisian fans to feel more comfortable in writing Frisian in an otherwise overwhelmingly Dutch part of the Internet.
Promoting Frisian
When earlier this year a local campervan dealership became a sponsor of sc Heerenveen, it described the club as “the most well-known billboard of Fryslân”. Of course, this is only one example, but it is clear that sc Heerenveen can be seen as a major exporter of Frisian-ness; and, as we have seen, sc Heerenveen does already in some part promote the use of Frisian online. The question then becomes: should the club use more Frisian in its PR?
Mirjam Vellinga shared her view on this with us. “I don’t see them as a major promoter of the Frisian language. But I do see them as an organization that foregrounds the Frisian identity and occasionally uses Frisian as part of that.”
"I wouldn’t advise them to do everything bilingually. If you do, people will likely skip the Frisian text and start reading the Dutch one, seeing as people aren’t very proficient in reading Frisian. But there’s definitely potential for more Frisian to be visible on the website for example, or in the stadium.”
“And, for example, in the stadium [in Cardiff] where I was on Saturday [22 March 2025 - JvB], they did the announcements first in Welsh and then in English. I think it’d be cool if that could happen in sc Heerenveen’s stadium as well!”
We agree with this view. On the one hand, sc Heerenveen has a lot of cultural significance in Fryslân. On the other hand, its Frisian social media following is broadly unfamiliar with reading the language. Nevertheless, there are steps the club can take to make Frisian more visible online, such as a multilingual website similar to that of Athletic Club Bilbao. Such steps may help raise Frisian’s social status and encourage fans to use the language more.
Conclusions
Sc Heerenveen has emerged as a key player in the field of minorities and football in Fryslân. The club has developed a PR strategy that is centred on its Frisian identity. As part of this, it uses the Frisian language in order to connect with its Frisian supporter community as well as to display its Frisian-ness to outsiders, while still allowing room for all its online followers to feel included. Consequently, it seems to have created a space for Frisian on social media platforms where the use of Frisian, especially by businesses and organizations, is otherwise not the norm. Still, we feel there is potential for the club to promote Frisian even more than it does currently, especially in written form, both online and offline. Its position as a large, culturally-Frisian organization could allow it to effectuate meaningful change in the province by offering its Frisian fans an opportunity to become more familiar with written Frisian.
