Many Dutch words are similar to English ones as both languages come from the same old Germanic root; particularly names for everyday things like fruits and vegetables or colours, e.g.

appel, apple,

peer, pear,

banaan, banana,

tomaat, tomato,

blauw, blue,

rood, red,

groen, green.

Dutch settlers in the U.S. in the 17th century held on to their language for quite some time and many words made their way into (American) English, such as

coleslaw from koolsla, cabbage salad,

cookie from koekje, biscuit, or

Santa Claus from Sinterklaas / Sint Nicholaas, Saint Nicholas.

Another source of Dutch influence on the English language is through Afrikaans, which in its turn is a Dutch-based creole, e.g.

apartheid, literally separateness,

wildebeest, wild beast,

aardvark, earth pig.

Look at the following Afrikaans sentence:

My pen was in my hand. You can see that it’s spelled exactly the same in English, even though the pronuncation in Afrikaans would be closer to Dutch.