The Netherlands is a small country on the North Sea. From any place in the country, the farthest point is never more than 350 kilometers away. It takes only a little more than four hours to travel by train from Vlissingen, in the southwest, to Groningen, in the northeast. More than 16 million people live there. Most of the people in the Netherlands live in the west of the country. The four largest cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, are there. Amsterdam is the capital, but The Hague is the seat of govemment. The Netherlands is sometimes called Holland, because an area in the west of the Netherlands used to be called Holland. The name lives on in the names of two Dutch provinces: North Holland and South Holland. The language spoken in the Netherlands is Dutch. In the province of Friesland, Frisian is also spoken. That is a separate  ( )  language, which is a little bit like English. The Netherlands is also called  _  .
Holland Dutch Friesland Utrecht