We’re gonna go back to a few of my 2013 postcards! This Official Postcrossing card arrived from the Netherlands! Depicted is the coat of arms for Friesland, a northern province of the country. Sorry – “Friesland” is not somewhere you can find supersized servings of salted strips of potatoes… though that would be cool. But it’s cool for other reasons! Friesland sits along the Wadden Sea, which hosts four islands called the Wadden Islands. They kinda look like Morse code markings if you look at them on the map. Boating in between the mainland and the islands is a common thing to do here, along with watersports. Oh, but what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that this is the only Dutch province that has a second official language! Alongside Dutch, the other language is West Frisian. This is a language that dates back to the days of the Germanic tribes, and it’s most closely associated with Old English, which is the earliest historical form of English used by Anglo-Saxons of the 5th century (which would be an example of a Germanic tribe). A considerable amount of people in Friesland today can understand this language, so despite its narrow base of speakers, it is not in any way a dying language. Thank you very much for sending me this postcard!
