I do think Latin literacy and comprehension in the medieval period are underestimated. Every parish church would have a number of clerics in minor orders, along with priests and deacons, plus a bunch of boys learning the ropes in what were effectively schools. Not all of them would become priests, but in the meantime they would learn Latin and written English along with Gregorian chant and sometimes other subjects. So in any parish a significant number of parishioners were literate to some extent. The popularity of The Layfolks Mass Book in the 14th century, with its reference to parts of the Mass in Latin (assuming knowledge at least of the form/structure) speaks to good levels of literacy. My view is that the assumption of lack of understanding of Latin is a relic of Protestant propaganda rather than fact.
Thank you for this comment! I agree, the "Reformation" may have done a lot to make the comprehension issue seem worse than it really was, and as you pointed out, "literacy" or "comprehension" is not a yes/no phenomenon. I think your description of the parish/village environment, with varying degrees of education here and there, is accurate. I said that there were "a lot of priests and monks in the Middle Ages," but the way you expressed it is more accurate: there were a lot of priests, monks, deacons, lectors, acolytes...
Eammon Duffy has supported your hypothesis- he points out that the Medieval English ordinary folk were highly literate and truly pious. The history of the reformation was basically distorted to support the rationale of destroying Christian unity - they had to demonise the Catholic Church and justify it by those platitudes.
Fascinating perspective on how medieval people would have learned Latin.
Professor Duffy mentions an anecdote about the Prayer Book Rebellion, in which the people of Cornwall complained that they would not be able to understand the liturgy when it was translated into English.
“We will have our old service of matins, mass, evensong, and procession in Latin as it was before. And so we the Cornishmen (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.”
Of course, the implication is that they did, at least to some extent, understand the liturgy in Latin.
I once did a paper for my Medieval Latin class on Dhuoda’s Manual and medieval mothers' role in teaching their children to learn the liturgical prayers and, in some cases, to read. The way they often did this was through the Psalters, which, as Duffy records, were much more widely available than scholars previously realized, especially in England. (He has one funny anecdote about a pauper woman stealing one from an English servant.)
There is other scholarship supports this, but if you look at the numerous medieval images of Saint Anne, you will see that they almost always depict her teaching Mary to read or reading with Mary. These images of Saint Anne served as a model for mothers who were expected to teach their children liturgical prayers and, in many cases, to read.
This is a wonderful comment, thank you Amelia! I haven't come across that story of the "we will have our old service in Latin" Cornishmen, and I love it!!
I remember when I first attended a Vietnamese Mass. Robert, the angelic sound of the voiced responses was enough to transport me to another place. I knew not what words they spoke, but I knew the sequence and timing and filled in the mental prayer in English.
Of course, as you have pointed out many times, the most fundamental language of the liturgy consists in its symbols and ceremonies, which are open to all, no matter what verbal language they speak.
Moreover, I've noticed in my own lifetime how easily children in particular pick up and sing Latin chants at Mass, and how people more generally "figure their way out" without much formal instruction. The Order of Mass is quite fixed, repetitious, and predictable, and this by design.
Truly, part of the supernal genius of the traditional Roman liturgy, especially when careful attention is given to the ars celebrandi, is that it can delight, inspire, edify, and sanctify even when the attendee knows not one word of Latin. I actually go back and forth about how much to emphasize Latin comprehension as a means of enriching one's experience at the TLM, especially with hand missals so widely available. But more and more I feel that for those who are so inclined, it's very much worthwhile to pursue enough proficiency to understand the chanted propers and portions of the most cherished hymns and sequences.
Indeed. Here are my thoughts, from a Tradition & Sanity post called "Vindicating Mystery Against Its Rationalist Enemies":
« My thesis is not that we should just float sleepily in a sea of confusion. “Not understanding” is beneficial to the extent that we seek to understand, just as wonder should provoke us to go “further up and further in.” For we are driven by grace to the vision of God, and likewise we are driven by grace to know the meanings of Scripture and to know the meanings of the liturgical rites. The lover wants to know the beloved and everything about the beloved. A laziness contented with passivity would have nothing admirable about it.
In a remarkable 1978 speech, Pope John Paul II quoted Cicero: “Non enim tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire” (“It is not so much distinguished to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it”). In other words, we mustn’t be lazy about educating ourselves. We should acquire some knowledge of the principal language of Western civilization and of the Roman Church. Assuredly such knowledge does not reduce the mystery of the traditional liturgy; if anything, it intensifies one’s astonishment at its spiritual subtleties and literary allusions. Intellectual enrichment and cultural literacy are always that way: so far from narrowing one’s life, they multiply occasions of wonder and open new possibilities for contemplation. Beauty itself seems to grow as one’s capacity to see it or hear it grows.
Perhaps we could put it this way: the traditional Mass is good not because it baffles us or presents barriers, but because it humbles our pride and whets our appetite, with the barriers as so many provocations to intimacy. As the Lord says through the prophet Isaias: “I will give thee hidden treasures, and the concealed riches of secret places: that thou mayest know that I am the Lord Who calls thee by thy name, the God of Israel” (Is 45:3). »
And a bit later:
« The traditional liturgy feeds us in just this way, by starting with the milk of outward splendor — the pomp of the ceremonies, the sweetness of the music, the “smells and bells” that capture our attention and keep it focused on the external symbols — and then moving us over time to the meat of the prayers in their dense content (think of the towering mysteries of the Roman Canon!) and the subtleties of the rite that one comes to see only after years of attending it, and for the understanding of which one must put in some effort of study and mental exercise. »
It is interesting, I think if one were to watch silent recordings of a Latin Mass, a Byzantine Divine Liturgy (of either St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil), and a novus ordo Mass, the important high points of the liturgy would be evident in the first two, but much less noticeable (although not completely absent) with the third.
A colleague of mine accidentally acquired some comprehension of spoken Japanese (but cannot speak it) by watching a lot of anime with subtitles. If someone is periodically immersed in comprehensible input they will eventually pick it up because that is what human brains do (we are wired to acquire language, which I think would be an interesting thing to meditate on) so the only questions for me are the amount of exposure (if he watched anime only annually it would be insufficient) and the type of exposure (if he listened to an audio track with no subtitles and no visual clues it would be insufficient). We ought also to keep in mind that it's not like people wanted the laity to *not* understand the Latin vocabulary of the liturgy. This wouldn't mean that they could hold a scholarly conversation (or any sort of conversation) in it, but that they could generally grasp the meaning. Familiarity and repetitiveness would also play a part since I can follow Mass in Italian (1. Latin cognates 2. in most parts I know what meaning to expect and can recognize a Gospel... St Paul not so much) but I cannot understand more than a few words of a homily in Italian because I do not already know roughly what it will mean and there are no accompanying liturgical gestures as in some of the prayers of the Mass. The psalter for the office is another matter.
Exactly, if comprehensible input is there, comprehension should develop, at least slowly. As with the anime example, the key variables in the medieval-liturgy case are the amount of exposure and the degree of comprehensibility. Unfortunately, the extant records don't allow us to formulate satisfying answers to those questions.
Very good piece. I'll also add that many of the early medieval "barbarian" societies who imported non-Latin languages into the West (e.g. the Visigoths) were very eager, once they were done conquering, to replicate the traditions of classical Rome (justice, triumphal ceremonies, politics) which included learning Latin alongside and through the liturgy, as early liturgical texts that are clearly meant to be heard and engaged with by the majority of the laity attest to.
This is very interesting, and something I've not considered—the idea that early medieval liturgy was actively perceived as a means of language instruction for Christians coming from non-Latinate language groups.
Looking forward to your series on Latin in the liturgy. I’m blessed to be able to attend the TLM every day and over the years it has transformed my understanding of the Divine. Would that everyone in the Western world obtains that opportunity again. I think we would see a rebirth of Western civilization.
Well, there is a Nobel Prize-winning novel from 1930s called Kristin Lavransdatter. It takes place in deep medieval Catholic Norway. The heroine has grown up on a respected farmer’s family, not formally educated at all, yet she has learned plenty of Latin, prayers and hymns. These are the seeds of her eventual salvation. The author Sigrid Undset was noted for her deep impeccable research. Sometime fiction can tell a truer story.
I love this book - Sigrid Undset really delves deeply into the characters and her understanding of the times Kristin lived in makes everything very alive and present. I was deeply moved by it. The Church and its customs and Mass are very much part of the story.
I’m thrilled you are going to help us learn Latin! Believe it or not, as a freshman in a public high school an age ago, I took a year of Latin. I doubt very few public schools do that anymore. But recently, other than becoming familiar with the Latin psalms in the Divine Office and learning things piecemeal from singing propers at Mass, I would love to be more systematic about learning Latin again. Thank you!
Thank you, Robert, for yet another excellent article. Im learning so much about the Middle Ages.
It occurred to me while reading this essay that we don’t realize how thoroughly we in British and former British territories are immersed in an Anglo-centric milieu. Everything is experienced through this lens. I think this is true even of those of us who live partially in non Anglo cultures (Italo-Americans, Franco-Americans, etc.). Thus we assume that, say, those with Italian or Spanish as their first language experience the world the same way we do which is not the case. Your point that the people living in Southern Europe would have had a different Latin comprehension than those living where Germanic languages were spoken is well founded and important to remember, especially in today’s world where English is increasingly the common language of communication as French and Latin were in earlier times.
I completely agree, Father! We can easily forget how altered the world is by our Anglo-centric lens. And you bring up a great point about English as the current international language. Think how many people in continental Europe develop some degree of proficiency in English, maybe even without extensive formal study. How much of the international language did people pick up in the Middle Ages, when the international language was Latin?
This is another wonderful post and I'm excited to learn more Latin prayers and hymns in the upcoming posts! (And my Latin-learning children will be shown them as well.). Thank you!
I think as anglophones, it's also easy to forget that the vast majority of people on the planet are at least bilingual, even if it's just a local dialect and their national or official language.
I thought the point about people speaking romance languages understanding the Latin liturgy more easily was fascinating. Was I the only one to notice that those northern European countries where Germanic languages were spoken(Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, UK) were those where the reformation took hold most strongly?
That geographical divide—southern Catholics vs. northern Protestants—is an important and somewhat mysterious feature of European history. I think language did play a role.
Wonderful essay as always. As others have said -- I think you're right that modern folks underestimate the amount of Latin medieval people would have understood.
I love your idea of helping others understand and appreciate liturgical Latin! I'm looking forward to your series on it!
To me, any translation lacks something of the original's flavor -- the effect is abstraction rather than distillation. As my husband says, a translator is a traitor (which itself sounds better in Italian -- "traduttore, traditore"). Language expresses so much more than the words' meanings.
I started learning Latin with my kids a year or so before we entered the Catholic Church. When we (praise God!) landed in an FSSP parish, I was grateful we had some preparation for the liturgy. Being able to pray the Mass in both English and Latin is a great gift, a double blessing!
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. Translation is especially unsatisfying with mystical, poetic, and musical texts like those of the Mass, and I really think it is worthwhile to learn some Latin so that we can experience them more fully in the original language!
IMO. we educate ( me with an advanced degree), the ability of "commoners" to learn multiple languages to get along. Our cleaning lady from Haiti knows English French and Creole. Africans learn multiple languages due to the number of tribal languages.
Your hypothesis about exposure to Latin from infancy is not testable perhaps in Latin, but it has been tested in so many other languages that it is widely accepted, not the least by immigrants who observe their children acquiring oceans of the new language not spoken at home, and that long before they go to formal school, while the adults never acquire notable fluency and in some cases no fluency whatsoever.
You're right, Janet, we see this all the time with modern vernacular languages. The linguistic circumstances involved in medieval liturgy are different, but are they really 𝘴𝘰 different? I think to some extent the two situations are analogous.
I can personally confirm that linguistic immersion in Latin is very much possible, even in the modern age. I'd acquired a decent amount of liturgical Latin from singing in choirs and attending the TLM, and I distinctly remember having memorized the entire Nicene Creed in Latin by the time I was 12 or so. I also studied French formally from sixth grade through college, which definitely helped, and since I took classical voice lessons, I was also exposed to Italian (never taken an Italian class though). I remember looking at footnotes in music books which would be written in English, German, French, and Italian and comparing the languages right next to each other. I've only formally taken one semester of Latin and it wasn't until I was nineteen, but I remember translating the authentic interpretations from the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts when I was sixteen. Nowadays I'm doing the entire pre-Divino Afflatu Office in Latin, every day. Maybe having been raised bilingual also rewired my brain or something.
Thank you for this interesting comment! All your experiences are good demonstrations of what another commenter said: the human mind is designed to acquire language.
Your hypothesis about exposure to Latin from infancy is not testable perhaps in Latin, but it has been tested in so many other languages that it is widely accepted, not the least by immigrants who observe their children acquiring oceans of the new language not spoken at home, and that long before they go to formal school, while the adults never acquire notable fluency and in some cases no fluency whatsoever.
I do think Latin literacy and comprehension in the medieval period are underestimated. Every parish church would have a number of clerics in minor orders, along with priests and deacons, plus a bunch of boys learning the ropes in what were effectively schools. Not all of them would become priests, but in the meantime they would learn Latin and written English along with Gregorian chant and sometimes other subjects. So in any parish a significant number of parishioners were literate to some extent. The popularity of The Layfolks Mass Book in the 14th century, with its reference to parts of the Mass in Latin (assuming knowledge at least of the form/structure) speaks to good levels of literacy. My view is that the assumption of lack of understanding of Latin is a relic of Protestant propaganda rather than fact.
Thank you for this comment! I agree, the "Reformation" may have done a lot to make the comprehension issue seem worse than it really was, and as you pointed out, "literacy" or "comprehension" is not a yes/no phenomenon. I think your description of the parish/village environment, with varying degrees of education here and there, is accurate. I said that there were "a lot of priests and monks in the Middle Ages," but the way you expressed it is more accurate: there were a lot of priests, monks, deacons, lectors, acolytes...
Eammon Duffy has supported your hypothesis- he points out that the Medieval English ordinary folk were highly literate and truly pious. The history of the reformation was basically distorted to support the rationale of destroying Christian unity - they had to demonise the Catholic Church and justify it by those platitudes.
I am very glad to see the estimable Professor Duffy brought into this discussion!
Fascinating perspective on how medieval people would have learned Latin.
Professor Duffy mentions an anecdote about the Prayer Book Rebellion, in which the people of Cornwall complained that they would not be able to understand the liturgy when it was translated into English.
“We will have our old service of matins, mass, evensong, and procession in Latin as it was before. And so we the Cornishmen (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.”
Of course, the implication is that they did, at least to some extent, understand the liturgy in Latin.
I once did a paper for my Medieval Latin class on Dhuoda’s Manual and medieval mothers' role in teaching their children to learn the liturgical prayers and, in some cases, to read. The way they often did this was through the Psalters, which, as Duffy records, were much more widely available than scholars previously realized, especially in England. (He has one funny anecdote about a pauper woman stealing one from an English servant.)
There is other scholarship supports this, but if you look at the numerous medieval images of Saint Anne, you will see that they almost always depict her teaching Mary to read or reading with Mary. These images of Saint Anne served as a model for mothers who were expected to teach their children liturgical prayers and, in many cases, to read.
This is a wonderful comment, thank you Amelia! I haven't come across that story of the "we will have our old service in Latin" Cornishmen, and I love it!!
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103S1H
I remember when I first attended a Vietnamese Mass. Robert, the angelic sound of the voiced responses was enough to transport me to another place. I knew not what words they spoke, but I knew the sequence and timing and filled in the mental prayer in English.
This is also one of the best ways of learning the elements of a new language - a kind of living Rosetta Stone, if you like
Of course, as you have pointed out many times, the most fundamental language of the liturgy consists in its symbols and ceremonies, which are open to all, no matter what verbal language they speak.
Moreover, I've noticed in my own lifetime how easily children in particular pick up and sing Latin chants at Mass, and how people more generally "figure their way out" without much formal instruction. The Order of Mass is quite fixed, repetitious, and predictable, and this by design.
Truly, part of the supernal genius of the traditional Roman liturgy, especially when careful attention is given to the ars celebrandi, is that it can delight, inspire, edify, and sanctify even when the attendee knows not one word of Latin. I actually go back and forth about how much to emphasize Latin comprehension as a means of enriching one's experience at the TLM, especially with hand missals so widely available. But more and more I feel that for those who are so inclined, it's very much worthwhile to pursue enough proficiency to understand the chanted propers and portions of the most cherished hymns and sequences.
Indeed. Here are my thoughts, from a Tradition & Sanity post called "Vindicating Mystery Against Its Rationalist Enemies":
« My thesis is not that we should just float sleepily in a sea of confusion. “Not understanding” is beneficial to the extent that we seek to understand, just as wonder should provoke us to go “further up and further in.” For we are driven by grace to the vision of God, and likewise we are driven by grace to know the meanings of Scripture and to know the meanings of the liturgical rites. The lover wants to know the beloved and everything about the beloved. A laziness contented with passivity would have nothing admirable about it.
In a remarkable 1978 speech, Pope John Paul II quoted Cicero: “Non enim tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire” (“It is not so much distinguished to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it”). In other words, we mustn’t be lazy about educating ourselves. We should acquire some knowledge of the principal language of Western civilization and of the Roman Church. Assuredly such knowledge does not reduce the mystery of the traditional liturgy; if anything, it intensifies one’s astonishment at its spiritual subtleties and literary allusions. Intellectual enrichment and cultural literacy are always that way: so far from narrowing one’s life, they multiply occasions of wonder and open new possibilities for contemplation. Beauty itself seems to grow as one’s capacity to see it or hear it grows.
Perhaps we could put it this way: the traditional Mass is good not because it baffles us or presents barriers, but because it humbles our pride and whets our appetite, with the barriers as so many provocations to intimacy. As the Lord says through the prophet Isaias: “I will give thee hidden treasures, and the concealed riches of secret places: that thou mayest know that I am the Lord Who calls thee by thy name, the God of Israel” (Is 45:3). »
And a bit later:
« The traditional liturgy feeds us in just this way, by starting with the milk of outward splendor — the pomp of the ceremonies, the sweetness of the music, the “smells and bells” that capture our attention and keep it focused on the external symbols — and then moving us over time to the meat of the prayers in their dense content (think of the towering mysteries of the Roman Canon!) and the subtleties of the rite that one comes to see only after years of attending it, and for the understanding of which one must put in some effort of study and mental exercise. »
https://www.traditionsanity.com/p/vindicating-mystery-against-its-rationalist
I've never read a better reflection on this topic!
It is interesting, I think if one were to watch silent recordings of a Latin Mass, a Byzantine Divine Liturgy (of either St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil), and a novus ordo Mass, the important high points of the liturgy would be evident in the first two, but much less noticeable (although not completely absent) with the third.
A colleague of mine accidentally acquired some comprehension of spoken Japanese (but cannot speak it) by watching a lot of anime with subtitles. If someone is periodically immersed in comprehensible input they will eventually pick it up because that is what human brains do (we are wired to acquire language, which I think would be an interesting thing to meditate on) so the only questions for me are the amount of exposure (if he watched anime only annually it would be insufficient) and the type of exposure (if he listened to an audio track with no subtitles and no visual clues it would be insufficient). We ought also to keep in mind that it's not like people wanted the laity to *not* understand the Latin vocabulary of the liturgy. This wouldn't mean that they could hold a scholarly conversation (or any sort of conversation) in it, but that they could generally grasp the meaning. Familiarity and repetitiveness would also play a part since I can follow Mass in Italian (1. Latin cognates 2. in most parts I know what meaning to expect and can recognize a Gospel... St Paul not so much) but I cannot understand more than a few words of a homily in Italian because I do not already know roughly what it will mean and there are no accompanying liturgical gestures as in some of the prayers of the Mass. The psalter for the office is another matter.
Exactly, if comprehensible input is there, comprehension should develop, at least slowly. As with the anime example, the key variables in the medieval-liturgy case are the amount of exposure and the degree of comprehensibility. Unfortunately, the extant records don't allow us to formulate satisfying answers to those questions.
Very good piece. I'll also add that many of the early medieval "barbarian" societies who imported non-Latin languages into the West (e.g. the Visigoths) were very eager, once they were done conquering, to replicate the traditions of classical Rome (justice, triumphal ceremonies, politics) which included learning Latin alongside and through the liturgy, as early liturgical texts that are clearly meant to be heard and engaged with by the majority of the laity attest to.
This is very interesting, and something I've not considered—the idea that early medieval liturgy was actively perceived as a means of language instruction for Christians coming from non-Latinate language groups.
Looking forward to your series on Latin in the liturgy. I’m blessed to be able to attend the TLM every day and over the years it has transformed my understanding of the Divine. Would that everyone in the Western world obtains that opportunity again. I think we would see a rebirth of Western civilization.
Well said, Thomas. One of my favorite words for describing the traditional liturgy is "transformative."
Well, there is a Nobel Prize-winning novel from 1930s called Kristin Lavransdatter. It takes place in deep medieval Catholic Norway. The heroine has grown up on a respected farmer’s family, not formally educated at all, yet she has learned plenty of Latin, prayers and hymns. These are the seeds of her eventual salvation. The author Sigrid Undset was noted for her deep impeccable research. Sometime fiction can tell a truer story.
I love this book - Sigrid Undset really delves deeply into the characters and her understanding of the times Kristin lived in makes everything very alive and present. I was deeply moved by it. The Church and its customs and Mass are very much part of the story.
I’m thrilled you are going to help us learn Latin! Believe it or not, as a freshman in a public high school an age ago, I took a year of Latin. I doubt very few public schools do that anymore. But recently, other than becoming familiar with the Latin psalms in the Divine Office and learning things piecemeal from singing propers at Mass, I would love to be more systematic about learning Latin again. Thank you!
You're welcome, and I hope that the Learning Latin series proves fruitful!
Thank you, Robert, for yet another excellent article. Im learning so much about the Middle Ages.
It occurred to me while reading this essay that we don’t realize how thoroughly we in British and former British territories are immersed in an Anglo-centric milieu. Everything is experienced through this lens. I think this is true even of those of us who live partially in non Anglo cultures (Italo-Americans, Franco-Americans, etc.). Thus we assume that, say, those with Italian or Spanish as their first language experience the world the same way we do which is not the case. Your point that the people living in Southern Europe would have had a different Latin comprehension than those living where Germanic languages were spoken is well founded and important to remember, especially in today’s world where English is increasingly the common language of communication as French and Latin were in earlier times.
I completely agree, Father! We can easily forget how altered the world is by our Anglo-centric lens. And you bring up a great point about English as the current international language. Think how many people in continental Europe develop some degree of proficiency in English, maybe even without extensive formal study. How much of the international language did people pick up in the Middle Ages, when the international language was Latin?
This is another wonderful post and I'm excited to learn more Latin prayers and hymns in the upcoming posts! (And my Latin-learning children will be shown them as well.). Thank you!
Thank you for this comment, Lynn! I hope that you and your children benefit from the Learning Liturgical Latin series!
I think as anglophones, it's also easy to forget that the vast majority of people on the planet are at least bilingual, even if it's just a local dialect and their national or official language.
I thought the point about people speaking romance languages understanding the Latin liturgy more easily was fascinating. Was I the only one to notice that those northern European countries where Germanic languages were spoken(Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, UK) were those where the reformation took hold most strongly?
That geographical divide—southern Catholics vs. northern Protestants—is an important and somewhat mysterious feature of European history. I think language did play a role.
Wonderful essay as always. As others have said -- I think you're right that modern folks underestimate the amount of Latin medieval people would have understood.
I love your idea of helping others understand and appreciate liturgical Latin! I'm looking forward to your series on it!
To me, any translation lacks something of the original's flavor -- the effect is abstraction rather than distillation. As my husband says, a translator is a traitor (which itself sounds better in Italian -- "traduttore, traditore"). Language expresses so much more than the words' meanings.
I started learning Latin with my kids a year or so before we entered the Catholic Church. When we (praise God!) landed in an FSSP parish, I was grateful we had some preparation for the liturgy. Being able to pray the Mass in both English and Latin is a great gift, a double blessing!
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. Translation is especially unsatisfying with mystical, poetic, and musical texts like those of the Mass, and I really think it is worthwhile to learn some Latin so that we can experience them more fully in the original language!
IMO. we educate ( me with an advanced degree), the ability of "commoners" to learn multiple languages to get along. Our cleaning lady from Haiti knows English French and Creole. Africans learn multiple languages due to the number of tribal languages.
Wow. I'll read it very calmly. I think there's a lot to learn from this article. Congratulations.
Your hypothesis about exposure to Latin from infancy is not testable perhaps in Latin, but it has been tested in so many other languages that it is widely accepted, not the least by immigrants who observe their children acquiring oceans of the new language not spoken at home, and that long before they go to formal school, while the adults never acquire notable fluency and in some cases no fluency whatsoever.
You're right, Janet, we see this all the time with modern vernacular languages. The linguistic circumstances involved in medieval liturgy are different, but are they really 𝘴𝘰 different? I think to some extent the two situations are analogous.
I can personally confirm that linguistic immersion in Latin is very much possible, even in the modern age. I'd acquired a decent amount of liturgical Latin from singing in choirs and attending the TLM, and I distinctly remember having memorized the entire Nicene Creed in Latin by the time I was 12 or so. I also studied French formally from sixth grade through college, which definitely helped, and since I took classical voice lessons, I was also exposed to Italian (never taken an Italian class though). I remember looking at footnotes in music books which would be written in English, German, French, and Italian and comparing the languages right next to each other. I've only formally taken one semester of Latin and it wasn't until I was nineteen, but I remember translating the authentic interpretations from the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts when I was sixteen. Nowadays I'm doing the entire pre-Divino Afflatu Office in Latin, every day. Maybe having been raised bilingual also rewired my brain or something.
Thank you for this interesting comment! All your experiences are good demonstrations of what another commenter said: the human mind is designed to acquire language.
Your hypothesis about exposure to Latin from infancy is not testable perhaps in Latin, but it has been tested in so many other languages that it is widely accepted, not the least by immigrants who observe their children acquiring oceans of the new language not spoken at home, and that long before they go to formal school, while the adults never acquire notable fluency and in some cases no fluency whatsoever.