English, is, in the word of H. Beam Piper, the result of Norman men-at-arms trying to chat up Saxon barmaids, and no more legitimate than any of the other results.
Alternatively, as one James Nicholl put it, "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
English not only robs other languages of vocabulary at gunpoint, it proceeds to twist that new vocabulary into shapes not thought of in the original language. American English is distinct from British English (which itself has at least five major subvariants and multiple minor ones) in part because of the large percentage of vocabulary it has liberated from Spanish and from various American Indian languages.Things are getting worse; American English also liberated words from the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam to mention but a few of the more recent additions. And, no, 'banzai' in American English does NOT mean what 'banzai' means in Japanese, just to mention one example. ('Tenno heika banzai' = 'may the most gracious supreme majesty reign 10,000 years', or, more simply, 'long live the Emperor') British English also liberated words from foreign lands, ranging from 'bint' to 'khaki' and they aren't quite what's meant in Arabic or Hindi, either. Canadian English substitutes French and different American Indian languages for the Spanish and others in American English, and, worse, substitutes _old-fashioned_ French as Quebecois, being intensely conservative, speak a version of French not heard in France for nearly 200 years. Seriously. Mexican Spanish is notably different from Spanish Spanish thanks to all the local American Indian words it has loaded in... and thanks to the American English filtering over the border. And, oh, there are at least four major subvariants of American English.
I won't even go into Indian English or, God help us, Australian English (Jesus wept...) except to point out that as there are more speakers of Indian English than of any other variant, it's _they_ who speak the dominant version of English and they should be the ones in charge of creating International English. Which would have to be taught to pretty much everyone, including Indian English speakers, as a foreign language.