Japanese relatives (was Re: Multiple decent languages (was Yay!!!! I have)

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
> Back to Japanese and Indonesian I've run into many apparented words
> like haru - perut, te - tangan, me/manako (= me no ko) - mata,
> suki - suka, etc. I don't speak Korean, but I've got Korean friends
> in Japan who convincingly explain me that their grammar - not
> vocabulary, ok -  is just as similar to Japanese as French is to
> Spanish as some non-sino vocabulary is too like the famous ie-yip
> example :
> J : yipe > ipe > ihe > iwe > ie
> K : yipe > yip
The Japanese-Korean connection is fairly well-accepted, but the
Indonesian-Japanese connection is, AFAIK, not very well-accepted.  To be
accepted, you need to show regular correspondances.  For example, does
Japanese /h/ regularly correspond to Indonesian /p/?  It's also
important to look at gramatical forms (which is why it's so hard to
compare isolating languages), since borrowed vocabulary can mess with
your data, especially if borrowed long ago (so that they have had time
to evolve in both languages, creating correspondances).
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