I love that this board is intellectually curious enough to vote up articles like this. (I'm a word wonk, so this is especially interesting to me.)
FWIW: If anyone is interested in the history of language and how we got to talking this way, I'd suggest you check out John McWhorter's lectures from The Teaching Company (teach12.com).
+1 for recommending McWhorter's video course from TTC. It's excellent material and he teaches it very well.
For those that are interested, McWhorter's non-linguistic books are also worth a look, he also writes about race relations.
Edit: A major point I took away from his course is to not be opposed new words or other dialects of seemingly "less educated" nature. He talks about language as a dynamic, living entity and not something rigidly defined by a dictionary. He argues rather well that it's just part of the natural growth and mutation of language and should not be looked down on.
I recently read his book, "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue", and while it was a little bit unbalanced (he spends far too long dwelling on certain points), I really enjoyed it.
I haven't even heard of that one -- I'll check it out. I'm almost done with The Power of Babel, which covers a lot of the same ground as his TTC lectures.
FWIW: If anyone is interested in the history of language and how we got to talking this way, I'd suggest you check out John McWhorter's lectures from The Teaching Company (teach12.com).