Leeuwarden: Triumph and Tragedy
(Peter Karstkarel) The Low Countries - 2006, № 14, pp. 211-220
When it came to higher education, Leeuwarden was the place to be. At the end of the sixties, after having spent a few years in Amsterdam, the author returned to Friesland badly infected with the artistic bug. He thought he might do something with language or the fine arts, but his talent was meagre. Evening classes in Dutch Language and Literature seemed promising. It wasn't his mother tongue that he and his family spoke, and it wasn't Frisian either. They spoke something in between – city Frisian – a broad, agreeable little language that you only heard in Frisian cities and larger towns. It's doomed to disappear, though the author speaks it to this day.That's Leeuwarden for you: not Dutch, not Frisian, but something in between.
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