Strange Vernaculars: How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English, by Janet Sorensen

All languages started in the mouths of ordinary people. The lower orders did more to standardise English (and simplify its grammar) than in most languages, because English remained their main language for the three centuries after 1066, during which the upper classes used mainly French. Sadly, they were unable to affect its spelling, because they were illiterate. They would most likely not have left it as irrational and chaotic as the succession of clever boffins did, starting with monks in the 8th century substituting o for u in words like 'love, month' and 'wonder' and culminating with Johnson wrecking English consonant doubling in the 18th C. Because of his veneration of Latin, he bequeathed us ridiculous inconsistencies like 'shoddy body, very merry, sloppy copy'. (See EnglishSpellingProblems blog.) If ordinary people were able to do so, they would quickly clear up this mess.