[marginalia_nu]

Latin is largely similar due to an obsession with preserving the language dating all the way back to antiquity.

I think the big difference with English (and European vernacular at large) is that spelling was standardized surprisingly late, no earlier than the the 16th century, but with many languages several hundred years later. Before that you had the weird-looking "Thys boke is myne"-style spelling.

Sounds weird when you point it out, but the first English dictionary (the "Table Alphabeticall") was printed around the same time Shakespeare died.