Re: Anglo-Saxon....
Not a linguist by trade, but my understanding is that the Normans had picked up a lot of Romanized terms -- as one does when trying not to appear a parvenue after invading the West. Meanwhile, the Angles/Saxons/Jutes kept much of their language, generally not bothering to learn more than the minimum British needed to get their message across*. So, in the end, their words tended to be short and their sentences direct, until their Romanized brethren showed up with their posh talk and fancy grammar.
Thus, for instance, the Anglo-Saxon serfs butchered sheep and deer, while the Normans ate mutton and venison, the poor shat while the rich defecated, etc., so the rule of thumb became "If it's monosyllabic, it's Anglo-Saxon, if it's polysyllabic, it's probably a Norman import."
* -- This also explains why English is the rare language that, in general, doesn't gender its nouns: The British nouns had gender but the invading Saxons, et al, couldn't be bothered to learn them, so they just didn't. "Bring food!" was clear enough to get the job done, so that was it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
