[Sylos]

So, this Great Vowel Shift caused most of the pronunciation differences that English has compared to other Germanic languages.

I always thought it was just so odd compared to its siblings, because it had lots of influences from the colonization phase, but that apparently was done beforehand already.

[jcranmer]

The Great Vowel Shift is why we write words in Modern English as if we were speaking Middle English. But even before then, the shift from Old to Middle English radically simplified the Germanic grammar of English. The other major change is the tendency in English to borrow foreign words rather than the tendency to adapt them to English--for example, we say television, not farseeing.

Since many technical roots derive from Latin, this somewhat artificially inflates the Romance root contribution to English.

[kwoff]

maybe interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English