Many years ago I had a conversation with a friend, a Russian, about languages, and the way many of them had an official regulatory body, a board, whose responsibility it was to guide and control changes to both grammar and vocabulary.
She asked me who was responsible for controlling English, and was shocked when I said no one. At first she did not believe me, she thought I was having her on.
I ended up finding a quote for her, which explained it all both succinctly and graphically, and I was reminded of this when I found the quote amongst some papers a couple of hours ago.
I can’t cite the origin, because I don’t know who it is -
“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose vocabulary and grammar.â€
The cite you’re looking for was the prolific James Nicoll. He coined the epigram in the early 90’s and the meme’s been spreading since.
wikipedia’s got what I believe to be a reliable writeup if you search for ‘Nicholl’.