Actually, in my experience I think it WOULD do exactly the above.
Communication is based *lot* on shared cultural assumptions, gestures,
inflection, body language, etc. A lot of this is implied in the "Speak
XXX" skill.
Someone who has a high skill speaking english is very likely to be able to
communicate basic ideas to a native Dutch or German speaker, although I'd
say Afrikaans is at least another step away. There are many cognates, as
well as near-cognates and loan-words. In a generally non-literate society
I would venture to guess that this would even be more so (at least amongst
the mobile classes).
I'm a fairly literate native english speaker; I also speak German and Russian. I've never studied latin, but I can puzzle my way through a number of (short) latin texts. I'm sure I'm not getting every nuance, but I can get the gist.
Of course, this may have more to do with the fact that American English has SO MANY loan words and is of such polyglot origins.
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