English has not had European noun genders for about a thousand years now, first due to the Vikings conquering England and second due to the Normans (more Vikings) conquering England. Both Danish and Norman had noun genders, but the sheer instability and corruption that was introduced led to complex grammar in general being lost. However, Danish would formally lose the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns hundreds of years ago, meaning that there exists only a "common gender" and neuter gender. Dutch is the closest relevant language to English and it also has lost masculine and feminine distinction, in that the former's definite article is "de" and the latter's is "de". These would be "der" and "die" in High German, and of course are simply "the" in our genderless English.

Someone I know holds a theory that any Indo-European language that places stress on the first syllable will ultimately collapse into ruin just as English and other Germanic languages have. There are many greatly conservative IE languages alive today, including Lithuanian, most Slavic languages, and Icelandic.