Dutch Americans (locative). Similarities between Dutch and English are abundant. Examples include the article "the" ("de" in Dutch), the words "book" ("boek"), "house" ("huis"), "pen" ("pen"), and, "street" ("straat"), among others. Dutch and English are both part of the West Germanic language group and share several aspects. Adaptation of place names between the languages is common, as was the case of New York, where several landmarks like "Conyne Eylandt" (Rabbit Island) became more suitable to Anglophones (Coney Island). Contact between other languages also created various creoles with Dutch as the base language. Two examples, Jersey Dutch and Mohawk Dutch, are now extinct.
History of New York City During the mid 17th century, farms of free blacks covered where Washington Square Park later developed. The Dutch briefly regained the city in 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", before permanently ceding the colony of New Netherland to the English for what is now Suriname in November 1674. Some place names originated in the Dutch period and were named after places in the Netherlands, most notably Flushing (Dutch town of Vlissingen), Harlem (Dutch town of Haarlem), and Brooklyn (Dutch town of Breukelen). Few buildings, however, remain from the 17th century. The oldest recorded house still in existence in New York