I guess it is a matter of how “fluent” you are in the language. With some foreign languages, e.g. when I started learning a bit of Japanese, I could recognize some kanji, understand some bastc sentences, but still had no idea what it would sound like. Maybe it’s similar to that. We get good at recognizing patterns and interpret them just enough to accomplish what we need, and if we haven’t had any use for “knowing exactly what it sounds like” (maybe just enough to recognize we are missing some notes while playing), we save the energy needed to learn more.

But a conductor would definitely need to know what it should sound like (or how they would want the orchestra to make it sound), so it is part af the interpretation of the pattern.

Same for lord patricians and other intra-audiophiles.