There is no original copy. Language evolves, as several people have pointed out, usages and meanings change, new vocabulary is invented, or stolen from other languages, words fall into disuse, that's the way it is, though the invention of printing and the mass distribution of written material certainly slowed it down. Compare Chaucer's English to Shakespeare's English to modern English. Only about 200 years separates Chaucer and Shakespeare, and about 400 years separates Shakespeare from us, and the language changed far more in those first 200 years than it has in the past 400. Shakespeare is still comprehensible, Chaucer is not without special study, and probably wouldn't have been to many people of Shakespeare's time. Printing came along two generations after Chaucer and by Shakespeare's time was common, which greatly stabilized the language.
So yes, English is being bastardized, it always has been, that's one of its strengths. It's a sl ut of a language, as somebody once said, it's been known to chase other languages down the alley and mug them for new vocabulary. I haven't much sympathy with the grammar nazis, they're fighting a doomed rearguard action, though I really wish the younger generations would stop using "like" as every third or fourth word, and stop ending sentences on a rising inflection, like, you know? Sounds ignorant to my ear, and I could also happily go a long time without hearing the word "totally."
