Map of the Netherlands, with red dots marking the capitals of the provinces and black dots marking other notable cities
Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the bigger region known as Frisia. Its name in the Frisian language is Fryslân, which has also been its official name since 1997, and is therefore also used in official Dutch language publications. Friesland has 643,000 inhabitants (2005) and its capital is Leeuwarden (Ljouwert), with 91,000 inhabitants, in the centre of the province.
The English language is also closely related to Frisian. There is a saying about it: "As milk is to cheese, are English and Frise."
Another version of this saying reads (in Frisian): "Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries", which in English reads: "Butter, bread and green cheese, whoever can't say that is no real Frise". The saying plays on the sound differences between the Dutch and Frisian words for "butter, bread and green cheese", which in Frisian are pronounced almost identically to their English counterparts (showing the original closeness between the two languages), while in Dutch ("Boter, brood en groene kaas"), these words sound quite different.
Friesland is mainly an agricultural province. The famous black and white Friesiancattle and the well known black Friesian horse originated here.
Tourism, mainly on the lakes in the south west of the province, and on the islands in the Wadden Sea in the north, is an important source of income, too.
Another interesting feature are the many windmills. There are 195 windmills in the province of Friesland, from a total of about 1200 in the entire country.
