I did study middle english academically, but old english was only ever a recreational interest so my anglisc is not most meet. The reason for the implied class critique is that the initial burst of latinate loans come from historic french after the norman conquest. These basically displaced and reformed old english into middle english and were imposed by the conquerors after their victory, since the conquerors spoke french. In fact, english kings wrote declarations in french until at least 1258 https://archive.org/details/onlyenglishprocl00ellirich . This created an literal class distinction between the mostly french/latin speaking court and the mostly old/middle english speaking population etc. (I am sure you know this, just justifying my choice of phrase. See also that oft repeated factoid about cow/beef, chicken/poultry etc.). It also creates a clear chronology for when latinate versus germantic influences were dominant (old english is ofc influenced by norse and the danelaw).
Since then, latin/greek has been historically used as the international language for law, religion, science and medicine, hence even more jargon coming in or being coined as latinate words. “Use” is an interesting one, however! Still, I think you could edit mine to use the word “say” instead of “use” and it would basically still work.
[EDIT: I have since been informed that there has been a re-reestablishment of non-latinate words as proper upper class speech in the UK relatively recently. Also in general the Norman conquest was a long time ago and lots of intermixing happened, take what I say with some mixing function and noise added.]
I did study middle english academically, but old english was only ever a recreational interest so my anglisc is not most meet. The reason for the implied class critique is that the initial burst of latinate loans come from historic french after the norman conquest. These basically displaced and reformed old english into middle english and were imposed by the conquerors after their victory, since the conquerors spoke french. In fact, english kings wrote declarations in french until at least 1258 https://archive.org/details/onlyenglishprocl00ellirich . This created an literal class distinction between the mostly french/latin speaking court and the mostly old/middle english speaking population etc. (I am sure you know this, just justifying my choice of phrase. See also that oft repeated factoid about cow/beef, chicken/poultry etc.). It also creates a clear chronology for when latinate versus germantic influences were dominant (old english is ofc influenced by norse and the danelaw).
Since then, latin/greek has been historically used as the international language for law, religion, science and medicine, hence even more jargon coming in or being coined as latinate words. “Use” is an interesting one, however! Still, I think you could edit mine to use the word “say” instead of “use” and it would basically still work.
[EDIT: I have since been informed that there has been a re-reestablishment of non-latinate words as proper upper class speech in the UK relatively recently. Also in general the Norman conquest was a long time ago and lots of intermixing happened, take what I say with some mixing function and noise added.]