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The IJsselmeer (or Lake IJssel, alternative international spelling: Lake Yssel) is a shallow lake of 1100 km² in the central Netherlands bordering the provinces of Flevoland, North Holland and Friesland, with an average depth of 5 to 6 m. It is named after the IJssel river that drains into it via a smaller lake, the Ketelmeer. The internal capitalisation in the spelling is caused by the fact that IJ is a digraph in Dutch, possibly a ligature, and sometimes considered a single letter (see IJ (letter)). The IJsselmeer is Western Europe's largest lake.