I doubt that the latter statement is true.

Here is the wiki on verbing (”linguistic conversion”)

Wait, wait.. is that too far back? How about this:

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

The first, which is likely more comprehensible if you speak German than English (but not much) is the introduction to Beowulf, in Old English, from about the year 1000. The second, which is at least partly understandable but by no means clear, is the beginning of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in Middle English, from roughly 1400.

For other examples, compare Latin (from 2000 years ago) to modern Spanish, French, Italian and other Romance languages.

The point it that language changes and nothing we can do will stop it (though perhaps television and movies have slowed down the change in the standard language). Most of the stuff that William Safire writes about and gets in a twist over is going to become standard eventually. Do you ever want to boldly split an infinitive no one has split before? Has the use of “impact” as a verb impacted your writing? Did you ever feel like laying down and giving up when trying to use “lay” and “lie” correctly?

“Texting” at least fills an honest need for a word to describe what one is doing. Did you know that our modern “bye”, which we all know is short for “goodbye”, is actually a contraction from the mid 1500s of “god be with ye”? (Hence the goofy spelling.) We probably needed that, too.. and for it to be much shorter.

So, languages change, and there is nothing we can do about it, despite our seemingly very natural response to complain abut the degeneration of the language. But, unless you can read Beowulf in the original, the language you speak is just a “corruption” caused by years of French Norman rule in England starting in 1066.

But then, there are some things that bug the hell out of me, for no rational reason. Like the misuse of punctuation. Or splitting a single sentence into bits with periods. For no good reason.

So I know how you feel.

Or as Stephen Colbert said, “I’ve twat before.”