The "English creole" hypothesis has been discussed a lot and it is true that English is a bit special within Europe in having absorbed a lot of material from other languages such as French and Norse, but I still think that it is very recognisable as a Germanic language (both grammatically as well as from the perspective of "core vocabulary"), so I don't think that the languages "merged" in the same way as this maybe happened in the case of some recognised creoles. (See e.g. here for a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypoth...)
There is still no reason in principle why English couldn't have chosen a more regular system of spelling, especially at a time where literacy was low anyway. The idea that the spelling is irregular because you have several competing systems (French vs. Anglo-Saxon vs. Norse) might sound compelling, but I don't think it holds water, cf. homographs such as "sow" (female pig) and "sow" (to plant) which both have Old English origins.
(Also I don't think that "rendez-vous" is a good example. I don't have hard evidence, but I would find it entirely implausible that this is a word of Norman origin, it's much more likely to be a late import from the 18th or 19th century, when French was fashionable, not at all comparable to something like "pork".)
> There is still no reason in principle why English couldn't have chosen a more regular system of spelling, especially at a time where literacy was low anyway.
I mentioned that farther downthread. The original Webster's dictionary served exactly this purpose - in the early 1800s, his stated goal (IIRC) was to give the new USA a standardized language to help differentiate it from the country they'd split off from. Also mentioned downthread, he based his standardization on the languages the words were loaned from.
You ignored the part of my comment where I showed that English spelling is inconsistent even between words that have purely Old English origins. I really don't think your hypothesis holds water. The chaotic spelling of English is a historical coincidence and not some necessary consequence of how the English spoken language developed.
There is still no reason in principle why English couldn't have chosen a more regular system of spelling, especially at a time where literacy was low anyway. The idea that the spelling is irregular because you have several competing systems (French vs. Anglo-Saxon vs. Norse) might sound compelling, but I don't think it holds water, cf. homographs such as "sow" (female pig) and "sow" (to plant) which both have Old English origins.
(Also I don't think that "rendez-vous" is a good example. I don't have hard evidence, but I would find it entirely implausible that this is a word of Norman origin, it's much more likely to be a late import from the 18th or 19th century, when French was fashionable, not at all comparable to something like "pork".)