Great article, Ryan! This reminds me, Bill Bryson has a section on the influence of French on English, in Mother Tongue. One example he gave was that English remained the language of common peasants even after the aristocracy adopted French following the Norman conquest, so that farm animals kept their Anglo-Saxon names like cow, pig, chicken, deer, but took on Latin-derived labels after they were cooked i.e. beef, pork, poultry, venison.

I’m paraphrasing here, he wrote that some English speakers have an instinctive preference for Old English terms, so that they inherently prefer a hearty welcome to a cordial reception.

cc Gianina