R Grammar Gaffes Ruining The Language? Maybe Not

[Speck Tater]

4. If somebody hadn't gotten lazy and sloppy somewhere along the line

we'd still be speaking Old English with all it's grammatical case endings and complicated verb conjugations. English made huge strides forward in the way of streamlining during the Dark Ages when most English-speaking people could not read or write let alone speak "proper" English like this:

Fæder ūre þū þe eart on heofonum, (Father of ours, thou who art in heavens,)
Sī þīn nama ġehālgod. (Be thy name hallowed.)
Tōbecume þīn rīċe, (Come thy kingdom),
ġewurþe þīn willa, on eorðan swā swā on heofonum. (Worth (manifest) thy will, on earth as also in heaven.)
Ūre ġedæġhwāmlīcan hlāf syle ūs tō dæġ, (Our daily loaf do sell (give) to us today,)
and forgyf ūs ūre gyltas, swā swā wē forgyfað ūrum gyltendum. (And forgive us our guilts as also we forgive our guilters)
And ne ġelǣd þū ūs on costnunge, ac ālȳs ūs of yfele.(And do not lead thou us into temptation, but alese (release/deliver) us of (from) evil.)
Sōþlīċe. Soothly.

Note: The proper English alphabet has more that 26 letters. The letters "thorn" (þ) and "eth" (ð) are both spelled "th" these days, and "æ" is no longer used at all. Another sloppy mistake by illiterate peasants. Note that we no longer use the correct diacritical marks like the dot over the g and the lines over long vowels. There are very few people alive today who know proper English any more.