Well, I only bothered to read the first post, but most words in modern languages are direct descendents of the languages that preceded them. I believe English is composed mostly of Latin and German. Look at the similarities between many of the words in Spanish, and their Latin equivalents. I'm not sure how a language evolves into another language, but I assume it is due to regional slang, mispronunciations, accents, and the like.

This is eerie; many threads that've been popping up are the very things I've been wondering about lately.