Is this unusual, though? Fairly certain most romance language speakers can understand at least some latin if they put their minds to it.
I heard old French read aloud. I understood 10% (optimistically) and not even the overall meaning.
I would say that starting from the 1700's the language slowly makes sense.
Yes it works for basic texts, you can understand some words here and there.
Even as an English speaker, which is not a romance language, I can understand quite a few Latin words here and there, due to the fact that something like 50% of English vocabulary was borrowed from Latin or other romance languages.
The average English speaker cannot make sense of Latin prose. Picking out a few words here and there, isn't the same thing.
"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur."
All but 'Latine', and perhaps 'dictum', is gibberish to the average English speaker.
First stanza of Beowulf in Old English, transliterated into Latin characters:
> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning. ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned, geong in geardum, þone god sende folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat þe hie ær drugon aldorlease lange hwile.
Now that I think about it, I have never read Romance text written before the XIII century: Cantigas, Dante, etc.
There is a decent chance that an English speaker with a broad vocabulary would be able to recognize individual words in any foreign language that can be expressed with the ASCII character set.