Colonized by Spain in the 1600s, New Mexico is home to a dialect of Spanish that differs significantly from dialects spoken in Spain’s other former colonies in the Americas. Most notably, the New Mexican dialect retains older features of the language that other dialects lost in later centuries. But why would it have done so? New Mexico was so distant from population centers in Spain’s other colonies that it attracted few colonists after its initial colonization. Geographical isolation in turn would have limited the exposure of New Mexican colonists to changes occurring to Spanish grammar and vocabulary elsewhere in the empire. Thus, the present-day uniqueness of the New Mexican dialect suggests the extent to which ______blank