Repetition of words

[bi3mw]

Medieval languages had far smaller vocabularies

Well, I will be the devil's advocate here and will say that it is true.
They didn't have words like "airplane", "adrenaline", "flamingo", "boomerang" or "manga".

But when they talked about things known to them, they used a comparable vocabulary to ours.

Yes, that makes sense. It should also be noted that sometimes, especially in medieval Latin, the author's mother tongue influenced the creation of texts, so that one sometimes encountered “poor” Latin. However, this does not mean that there was a fundamental lack of possibilities for correct expression.
Here is an example quote:

„Es laut gar vbel, vnd man heisst es Küchen Latein, so man Latein redet nach aussweisen der Teutschen Zungen.“[1]
English translation:
“It sounds terrible, and it's called kitchen Latin when you speak Latin in the style (or idiom) of the German language.”

[1] Aventinus: Quoted from K. F. W. Wander (Hrsg.): Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon. Band 2. Leipzig 1870, Sp. 1660
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