Yes, I know about Frisian; there is this irony that Frysk is somewhat endangered while English has been so dominant for the last 70 years or however long. There is saying that illustrates the similarity "Green eggs and cheese make good English and Frysk" or something like that. It's very similar in the two languages. Regarding 'wick' and 'wijk' - I'm not sure but it is a deducation or guess I made that may very well be correct. I live near NYC, not much of the Dutch influence remains but it is still there if one looks. Obviously some of the place names in NYC and NY state have this. There is an Amsterdam Avenue in Manhatten (I forget exactly where). The two Oranges (West and East Orange - cities in New Jersey) are named after William of Nassau (I forget exactly what it was or what he did). Also maybe some Dutch sur-names still around northern New Jersey, New York state. English cities that end in 'chester' are from the Latin 'castorum' (miliary base, camp). 'Manchester' is the only example that comes to mind right now. I think that word changed into 'castro' in Spanish.

If you are looking for the germanic language closest to English, that is Frisian though. A language spoken by 300,000 people in the north of the Netherlands.

Old English and Frisian both originated from the germanic languages spoken in the west. An example is the shift from g to y.

German: gestern

Dutch: gisteren

Frisian: yester/yuster

English: yesterday.

Frisian lacks the French and Latin influence that English had though. It is maybe more like original old "west germanic" English.

By the way, I did not know that wick has the same origin as wijk. I actually thought that those places were called something-wijk in the new Amsterdam settlement (now New York) in the 17th century and then those names were transformed into something-wick by the English who could not pronounce the ij in wijk. Like Santiago became San Diego in California which was originally Spanish.

Dutch: maar, Ger.: aber. This might be an example from this time. idk The English words also lack the influence from this occurance, but English later on in its isolation. Vater, Mutter, Bruder; father, mother, brother. It all went to a D or T in high German, but maybe the Dutch words are closer to the English words. I saw the Dutch word 'wijk' or something, meaning 'farm', 'settlement' (something like that, right); this probably from the Viking raids and is also in English place names. (Brunswick, Cheswick, etc.) You probably already know.

Yup. Wikipedia is were I first learned about this topic.

Well I know the high german consonant shift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift

Is this what you are referring too? It is the biggest mistake ever! If the Germans had not done that, and had taken a more nothern dialect as standard German, German would be a whole lot more like Dutch. Or German and Dutch would have even become, or stayed, one language .