Yes, exactly. When Shakespeare was around, English still had more of these features, and is gradually losing them over time. Shakespearean English always reminds me of German grammar.
The benefit in communication is that the remaining basic form is unambiguous even without proper pausing.
> Shakespearean English always reminds me of German grammar.
One of the strongest phenomena that produces this resemblance is that in Early Modern English, there was no restriction¹ on forming questions by putting the verb before the subject noun phrase (optionally with a question word before both). In modern German, there's still no restriction on forming questions this way.
Essen Sie Fleisch?
eat you meat?
Sprechen Sie Französich?
speak you French?
Kommt Ihr aus Russland?
come you from Russia?
Glaubt er an Gott?
believes he in God?
Wohin geht sie?
whither goes she?
Wie macht er das?
how does he that?
Wir sind hier - wann kommt Ihr? [a travel ad slogan]
we are here - when come you?
In modern English, there is a new restriction that the verb that gets moved to the front can only be a form of "do"², "be", or an auxiliary verb (e.g. "can", "may", "should", "must", "might", "will", or "have"³, among others). When the main verb is not one of these, the sentence must be turned into a paraphrase (almost always using "do") before forming the question, like "I do speak Portuguese" → "Do you speak Portuguese?" or "I did have a pet lizard" → "Did you have a pet lizard?".
I have a German colleague who doesn't seem to have learned this restriction and continues producing German-style, or Shakespearean-style, questions in writing like "What contains that file?", "What message produced that command?" or "Updated you the configuration recently?".
In one of my college linguistics classes, I tried to deny that this change was real because I could still easily understand the Shakespearean questions. The trouble is that they nonetheless sounded archaic to me and I wouldn't actually have produced them myself in speech. So really, I should have admitted that there was a practical difference between comprehensibility and acceptability (and that difference with regard to a historic form is exactly what "sounding archaic" refers to).
¹ I'm not totally sure that there was no restriction at all; it may have begun to appear already but just not been complete.
² Though not as a main verb! Shakespeare has "wherefore did you so?" in Macbeth and "wherefore didst thou so?" in King John, which in modern English would have to be "why did you do so?" or "why did you do that?" rather than "why did you so?" or "why did you that?".
³ In some varieties of English "have" can be used this way in both the possessive and auxiliary senses ("have you any wool?" / "have you eaten?"), but in other varieties only in the auxiliary sense (in which case the paraphrase with "do you have..." is required when asking about possession). I'm not sure whether this still works in the past tense, or only in the present tense.
Btw, in modern spoken German we mostly only have two tenses left: present and perfect. Present is used for the present and the future. Perfect (formed with 'haben') is used for past events.
(Yes, we also still use other tenses. But they are much rarer in spoken German.)
And especially in spoken questions about things people did or didn't do, an auxiliary verb (like "haben" or "sein") is almost mandatory.
"Gingst Du nach Hause?" vs "Bist Du nach Hause gegangen?"
Yes, exactly. When Shakespeare was around, English still had more of these features, and is gradually losing them over time. Shakespearean English always reminds me of German grammar.
The benefit in communication is that the remaining basic form is unambiguous even without proper pausing.