A lot of the simplicity also came from contact with the Danes during the Danelaw period, effecting a sort of pidgin understandable by both Danish and English sp

A lot of the simplicity also came from contact with the Danes during the Danelaw period, effecting a sort of pidgin understandable by both Danish and English speakers in the area. We shaved off a lot of the inflections there as well. Over the last 1000 years or so, few can argue that English has more or less normalized these earlier influences into a "full-blown language" as the author states. It's extremely rich and has ways to express whatever was formally contained in its Germanic grammatical roots. What's GREAT about English from a learning perspective is that we DID hang on to a few pidgin aspects. Loss of tense and case inflections make English easier. Mastering its nuanced use is difficult, sure... but outside the US and the UK, you people don't really hold you to knowing which words collocate perfectly with others. In the next few decades, billions more functional English users will be minted on this planet. Native speakers can look forward to either cringing or embracing innovations that arise from that. It's an interesting time.