The Charming Dutch Town Where The Residents Still Speak A Language Very Close To Medieval English

To English speakers, Dutch will sound strangely familiar. "Mijn naam is George" won't trip up many English speakers, but more complex sentences like "Uw belastingaangifte moet volgende week worden ingediend" (Your taxes are due next week) definitely will. But even within the Netherlands, amidst its pristinely clean and well-organized lowlands of greenery, canals, and narrow buildings, people speak multiple languages. In the northwest Dutch province of Leeuwarden, about 400,000 people speak West Frisian (Frysk), one of Frisian's three dialects that stands as English's closest cousin language. If you bend your ear just right, it might sound like medieval English, pre-Norman Conquest in A.D. 1066 (i.e., pre-French influence). You can even bid farewell by saying "Good weekend," and everyone will understand.

Leeuwarden borders the North Sea and is less than 200 miles from Norwich, England, as the crow flies. This closeness goes a long way to explaining the intermingling of Germanic people in that region of the world, and the similarity of language between English and Frisian. Language similarities also make it fun for travelers who want to explore this region of the world. You can not only test your tongue on Dutch cheese ("kaas" in Dutch and "tsiis" in Frisian), but on everyday interactions.

Leeuwarden, the city — capital of Leeuwarden, the province — affords visitors the perfect chance to soak in some of the Netherlands' heartwarming charm and canal-side beauty. The town makes an excellent, lesser-known travel choice far from Amsterdam's absolute oversaturation of tourists, at about 2.5 hours away by train. Walking around Leeuwarden's central canal strip, Lange Pijp (Long Pipe), is enough of a treat in and of itself, even aside from the town's many museums, art galleries and exhibitions, and food options.

Much of the joy of visiting Leeuwarden comes from just wandering around and taking in its picturesque beauty. Like practically every other Dutch town, it has a central, circular-shaped old town defined by canals and studded with a clock tower or church. That downtown usually centers on a central plaza ("markt" in Dutch, or "merk" in Frisian), which you can think of like a Dutch version of an Italian piazza, but with far less tourist clutter and overpriced food and drink options (which travel writer Samantha Brown advises avoiding). The elegant and gorgeous town of Delft, the "mini-Amsterdam" that travel author Rick Steves recommends, features a plaza with a stadhuis (government building) on one side and a church, Nieuwe Kerk, on the other, exemplifying the traditional Dutch town layout. 

Leeuwarden's main landmark is the 1529-built Oldehove, an imposing but graceful structure. From there, you can walk clockwise around Leeuwarden's old downtown in roughly 30 minutes, ducking into galleries and eateries as you like, admiring the scenery and architecture, strolling down narrow streets with shoulder-to-shoulder facades and no cars, walking across bridges that pass over canals, and so forth. And when you want to check out some Frisian history, you can slip into Natuurmuseum Fryslan or Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden. If you want modern-meets-traditional art, you can step into the Pier Pander Temple or Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, an 18th-century palace converted into a ceramics museum. These are just a few of Leeuwarden's extensive art-and-history-related offerings. 

Along the way, no worries about getting around with English. No matter how similar it is to Frisian, the Dutch are extremely English-savvy. But if you want to pick up some Frisian, it shouldn't be too tough.

Dutch food gets a lot of flak for being less than fantastic. But as always, the question begs: Why are you traveling to your destination? You want Italian food in Italy, Greek food in Greece, and diabetes in the U.S. (okay, diner food). The protégé of travel author Rick Steves, Cameron Hewitt, describes this as being a "cultural chameleon," where you do as locals do, eat as locals eat, and drink as locals drink. This is the best way to approach food in Leeuwarden, where you can not only enjoy Dutch food, but also its Frisian variants.

You'll find many of the usual Dutch suspects in Leeuwarden, like kroketten (croquettes), stamppotten (mashed potatoes in a pot with sauerkraut), pannenkoken (crepe-like pancakes), and of course, the ever-beloved stroopwafels (circular, caramel-filled biscuits). On Fridays, Wilhelminaplein (a short walk from Oldehove) transforms into an outdoor market that locals use to buy groceries and flowers, have full meals, and browse chunks of cheese. 

And speaking of cheese ("kaas" in Dutch and "tsiis" in Frisian, remember), Leeuwarden has what ought to be dubbed "cheese street" in the form of Kleine Kerkstraat. The street, which is around the corner from Oldehove, has side-by-side cheese shops like the highly rated Zuivelhoeve Leeuwarden (4.7 out of 428 ratings on Google). Imagine walking into a room with floor-to-ceiling cheese wheels of all hues of yellow, and you've got the idea. You can perhaps even find some Gouda there, named after the Dutch city of Gouda but pronounced "khow-da" (with a back-of-the-throat fricative "kh" like at the end of the Scottish "loch") and not "goo-da" with a hard "g." But such language lessons can be left for an in-person visit to the land of English's closest cousin.