[jimtorr]

I once worked with someone whose Spanish Army ancestor settled near Santa Fe in about 1598. The family still lives on the same land, and speaks the dialect of the Conquistors, Catalan or whatever, I don’t recall. He said he could barely communicate with Mexicans.

[libstripper]

English is surprising, in part, because it stabilized in the early to middle sixteenth century to the point where a modern American reader can read and understand a document in English that was printed at that time. That's more than four centuries ago. However, if you go back four centuries before that to the twelfth century, "English" documents are almost unintelligible.