Personally I have translated documents of XVI century written in "ecclesiastic latin" guarded in the Archive of Vatican and no dictionary used in my school was helpful to help me to translate at least the 50% of words.
They are intelligible in the main structure, but the trend was to "latinize" popular words instead of to use "classical" ones.
Ilario
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It might be more accurate to call it an artificial dialect, rather than a different language it its own right. Apart from differences in pronunciation, and the lack of modern vocab in the ancient version, the two are mutually intelligible, right (I don't personally speak either, so I'm not sure)?