Among the many things I collect are books about the history of the English language. So I know that English is technically a Germanic language, though the pedigree is rather grubby at the moment.
Several interesting bites (I'm summarising): OE lost a lot of its conjugations a little time after the Angles and Saxons settled in because there were two "versions" of English largely with different conjugations, so they wore away. Also: A *lot* of change of Middle English can be blamed on the Normans (French). Prior to that, English resembled German, Dutch and Danish. It was also because of the Normans that English lost a lot of descriptive phrases that we've never regained.
Wade.