The 1066 counterfactual extends to the possibility that English would retain grammatical gender under a different Scandinavian political outcome. The explanation offered for its historical loss concerns contact among three systems of grammatical gender. These systems are described as incompatible and unstandardized. In that account, speakers increasingly abandoned the distinctions, although the exchange does not establish how English would develop in the imagined alternative history.
Notable Point · 4:56:08-4:56:47
Grammatical gender in a Scandinavian England
A linguistic aside to the 1066 scenario asks whether English might have retained grammatical gender.