AnWulf: Yourr take on academic writing is not wrong; however outlanders sometimes have more basic problems with "academic" style eg using "I" and "you" instead of writing more objectively; some from non-European cultures may have trouble understanding paragraphs: it really depends on what you were taught at school. We like to have a systematic approach to a topic; in some cultures it's more like a spiral and one may have no clue what the real topic is until the end (or at all!). For example:
"Korean no paragraph.
Each sentence next line."
if you see what i mean.....

"to be stood down"; is an "upsidedown" expression

Remembering your latin: terre, tuli, latum meaning to bear or carry, translation could be brought across as "bringing across" or "bringing over".....

I think Chaucer is for the most part okay; but the KIng James bible uses phrases like "evil concupiscence" (whatever that is) in places so it depends on what part you are looking at. The point being that Chaucer is generally quite intelligible to the modern ear.

Oops! I meant pervasive>> widespread

"The American influence is far too prevalent and not necessarily benign"
prevalent >> widespread
sway doesn't seem to work for influence.
necessarily>> ??
benign >> ???

AnWulf: IMHO in general, good storytelling (and poetry) uses as many real English words and phrases as possible. The short Saxon words are more punchy and feeling-based. There is no harm in having a few leitmotif latinate phrases for the oppressors, but long sections of latinate language become boring - okay for business and academics but not what you want to read on the beach. On the other hand I found hobbit-speak and elven-tung annoying and unreadable so one can go too far outside the mainstream.

"we have a good English word for "metaphor": KENNING." well not quite. Take "slam"; literally "slam the door"; but also used (esp in news headlines) to mean condemn eg "Govt report slams new training scheme for police". Hell maybe I am using metaphor wrongly anyway.??
1400 might be a good cut off date but I cannot go looking up dates to decide whether a word is okay or not. I suggest a) avoid (!) words directly imported (!) from latin (ie renaissance and after) b) admit (!) norman french words which have become embedded in English eg "use"; "point out"; and so on. Would be easier to guess. Eliminate (!) the words ending in "ate" "ation" ?? asf

Ængelfolc: metaphor

Ængelfolc: "A trustworthy source would be fine." Sorry, just meant we could use "trustworthy" instead of "authoritative" before the noun "source", whereas in another context, say, "She was very authoritative", we couldn't. Context changes meaning!
"Were you really taught that big & get... low class...." Yup, and then came rock n roll!

Sometimes it is easy enough to explain the meanings of latinate words, for instance, "incident"