[Sephiroth]

I'll chuck an obscure one in to show why we're different from them over the channel.

In Old English, our nouns took gender; by Middle English, gender had largely disappeared and by Tudor times had completely disappeared.

This subconscious tendency is part of what's in our heads and the way we go about things. They (Europe) are fixated on the letter of their laws and the complexity of the conjugations with no tendency to simplify (one of the reasons they all learn English as second language).

We were never a good fit for the EU; it should have stayed the EEC.