[DewarHolmes]

The English language 'evolves' mostly because people misuse words, or are too lazy to build their vocabulary and use the proper words to explain themselves. If you look back at many of the words whose meanings have changed, you will find that the changes were unnecessary. There have always (used figuratively) been other words available to describe things.
If there was ever a concept to which there was no word, then it would appropriate to make up a word. Take "google" for example-a word which still has its roots in something significant to its 'meaning'.

Here's a few examples of commonly bastardized English:

1.I have, many times, heard and seen people mispronounce or misspell the phrase "You shouldn't have…." as "You shouldn't of…". The latter has no meaning. "You shouldn't have" is-plain and simple-the correct way to say this phrase. If we want to make "Shouldn't of" acceptable, we will have to alter the meaning of the word "of" to fit that of "have", but why do something so silly when we have a perfectly good word for "have" already?
It is nothing more than ol' fashioned laziness, ignorance (used in the original sense of the word), or idiocy that causes one to misuse this phrase. Saying "…shouldn't of…' does not in any way improve the phrase, yet apparently many people find it 'more accessible'.
The only way I think we could improve it now is to…pound it out into 'an easily used form', such as "shntv". Ah-evolution!

2.I've seen plenty of mistakes concerning "Your" and "You're". The two have completely different meanings. As do 'to', 'too', and 'two'. There's no reason to change the meanings or combine them into one word simply because enough people don't know how to use them properly.
As far as abbreviations go, I can understand applying them to names of some organizations/places such as the YMCA, and state names, etc. but I see no benefit to abbreviating every word/phrase in the English language…it's just plain lazy and completely unnecessary.

3.I looked up the phrase "hear, hear" the other day to see if I was using it correctly, and found that many people misspell it as "here, here". The phrase "hear, hear" has a historical context which gives the phrase a meaning, whereas "here, here" is just nonsense. If enough people remain ignorant of the context, it will eventually be accepted as "here, here", as well as lose its historical meaning, and become yet another ambiguous phrase.
How is that an improvement?

I find it somewhat amusing that many changes in our language are often the result of the repeated misuse of words and phrases by people who are ignorant of their mistakes. I also find it somewhat amusing to hear "ig'nint" people misuse the word 'ignorant'.