What about the Dutch, I hear you ask. We’ll leave them for the moment. The Flemish certainly got about in the mediaeval period. They were the mercenaries that enabled the English kings to pacify Wales and Ireland. English and Dutch at that time were so close that it is difficult to say what influence there was.

The wool trade in Scotland was developed by Flemish merchants, mostly from Bruges, and the influence on the architecture is still visible. From Dutch we have Scots words like kirk – kerk (church); golf – kolf (club), keek – kijk (look); and the many sounds that are identical in both languages.

For influence on American English, we have to turn to the Dutch. When New Amsterdam became New York, many Dutch words remained. The name Jan Kees gives us Yankees, and you can sit on your stoop – stoep and eat coleslaw – koolsla and then cookies – koekjes. And there are all the shortened US forms, for example, sailboat – zeilboot and cook book – kookboek, which in the UK would be sailing boat and cookery book.

But the Dutch got to places that English would not reach for centuries. The Dutch East India Company started trading in Japan at the beginning of the 1600s and, until the middle of the 19th century, they were the only Westerners allowed such access to Japan. So not surprisingly, the Japanese have borrowed many words from Dutch. The Japanese can drink from a bika – beker (beaker); it may be made of tin, buriki – blik. Supoito comes from spuit – squirt and means a fire engine; karan is kraan – a tap; mesu is a mes (knife); masuto – mast (mast); and torappu is outside stairs, in Dutch trap.

I can just about imagine how these words got into the language but others are more baffling. Take otenba, which comes from ontembaar – untameable and means a tomboy. Or dontaku, which is a day off and derives from zondag (Sunday).

At this point I have to apologise to any Indonesians reading this because there is no space to examine the Dutch influence on their language. Come on, you’re thinking, he probably doesn’t know what to write. And this would be rightly echoed by the Dutch speakers among you who would say, as any New Yorker would, Kom aan!