Why does the original LaTeX need hyphenation patterns for German, Coptic, Greek, Ukrainian, and Russian in order to process a file?

I have been experimenting with the old pure LaTeX engine. I have noticed that for a very simple file with absolutely no language requirements whatsoever the old pure LaTeX engine will display an error unless the packages for the German, Coptic, Greek, Ukrainian, and Russian hyphenation patterns are included in the distribution.

Why would this be so? What is it that these package hyphenation patterns have that LaTeX needs for even very simple files?

My minimal file:

documentclass{article}

begin{document}

Text.

end{document}

I am using the latest MiKTeX distribution (2020) on Windows 10, 64-bit, if that makes a difference.