Suppose we have a ciphertext in a letter in, say, Spanish. Can we break it without command of Spanish? The answer is yes. Back in 2019, I gave a quotation from 1737 to this effect in "Is Codebreaking Possible without Knowing the Language?".
I saw similar observations in two books I recently read.
Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide, which I reviewed yesterday:
"Experience shows that breaking an encrypted message does not necessarily require command of the language used."
(p.76 in Japanese, p.74 in English)
Liza Mundy, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, which I mentioned last month:
"What Friedman had also taught them during their training is that you can break a foreign cipher without understanding the language, as long as you know how the letters in that language behave."
(p.138 in Japanese)
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