Reply #72: Right. The rate of change between peoples cut off from one another [View All]

[mistertrickster]

is remarkably uniform. After about 600 years, the two separated groups will be speaking separate, mutually unintelligible languages. This constant is considered so reliable that it is used to determine when one
group has separated from another.

If a Japanese (or someother language group) could speak to a Mayan, that would mean that the two speakers' groups would have a common root less than 600 years prior. That is extremely unlikely since Europeans have been in Cozumel for some 500 years already.

Also, a lot of people speak Japanese these days. It would be very surprising if these two languages were mutually intelligible and nobody had noticed it or studied it.