I never heard Rush Limbaugh say anything racist.

[Cyrus]

I wrote "When the wrong usage becomes the norm, the wrong becomes right."

Apologies for not putting the word "wrong" in brackets. There's no such thing as "wrong" or "right" in this field.

M wrote "That is true to some extent, BUT it isn't going to happen with "ask"/"ax" and "boil"/"burl". Obviously."

Again, how can you know? I'm not saying it is going to happen or it is not going to happen, because, very simply, I don't know. The factors that will determine this in the future are too many to allow me to make predictions. And the history of the English language (a language that has had three major influxes of "foreign" languages in it --Norse, Frnech, Normand--, to the extent that very few words from the "original" English now survive) tells us that much, much "greater" changes in English words have happened than the mere bagatelles you worry about.

...Even going backwards, linguists have serious problems in tracing roots. The quest for the "original language" has some amusing tridbits.