Persistence: I'm not sure that line of reasoning is actually valid. I think you need to be able to rule out other reasons for persistence before you can make th

Persistence: I'm not sure that line of reasoning is actually valid. I think you need to be able to rule out other reasons for persistence before you can make that conclusion. The article mentions that the genders are learned at an early age and seem to be very resistent to change. I just looked up Danish - it used to have masculine, feminine and neuter, but masculine disappeared into feminine. The theory given here is that it was a consequence of bilinguals simplifying things: https://dialekt.ku.dk/dialekter/dialekttraek/navneordenes_koen/ https://dialekt.ku.dk/dialekter/dialekttraek/navneordenes_ko... It wouldn't surprise me if modern English is a result of the same kind of multilingual simplification.