Lets say the Norman conquest never happens/is defeated, and England remains a united state with an Anglo-Saxon elite, independent of France and Normandy. How does English sound?
Obviously, we won't import so many French words, but beyond that, I wonder if there will be any a) changes to modern English grammer (perhaps it remains more like German grammer-IIRC case endings and complex verb conjugation didn't fully go away till after the conquest), and b)changes to how English sounds-specifically, whether we might avoid the Great Vowel Shift and other sound changes.
This kind of intrigues me because I have a Greek friend who claims he can read and understand the Koine Bible and can sort of understand the Illiad and Odyssey. I wonder if, without the Normans, we might still be able to understand, at least to some degree, the language of Beowulf rather than have it be completely foreign.