I cannot help but wonder, though, what Eraſmus might have thought about his own relationſhip to the Language upon which his professional life depended. He was able to use Latin to converse with scholars from across Europe in a way that would have been impossible without their common knowledge of a language that could ſpeak across nations, and even ages, preciſely because it had the priceleſs advantage of notbeing conſtantly reſhaped by the colloquialiſms of divergent groups of native ſpeakers.
Eraſmus could certainly read Claſſical Latin as eaſily as any of us read English, and could doubtleſs write a better version of it than all but a small fraction of Cicero's contemporaries. His pronunciation would of courſe have been markedly different from theirs, though not unintelligibly so. I would imagine that were Eraſmus ſomehow able to ſpend a day with Cicero, that they would likely be underſtanding each other quite well by the time they had got through breakfast. The queſtion is: Had Eraſmus been able to have that happy experience, would he then ſuddenly qualify, by the Golden Scholar's definition, as being fluent in Latin?