The author
H. Beam Piper had a quote of English being
the result of Norman knights trying to chat up Saxon barmaids, with a result that's just as legitimate as the other child of that union.
This also explains why English has so many cases of two words that mean almost the same thing. To a peasant it's a cow in the field, to a noble it's beef on the table. In most other languages you use the same word for both cases.
