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Two-thirds of the way through Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John WcWhorter, and I must say, this is something new for me.
Whilst reading other histories of English, it always niggled at the back of my mind that the authors rarely mention any influence of the native speakers on the language that has become modern English.
Mister McWhorter addresses this in a sensible, though by his own admission unorthodox way: He as a linguist argues that the etymologists are more interested in the "what happened when" than the "this happened why" and he explains quite well the lack of written proof (required by the aforementioned etymologists) for his theories.
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