Re: OT: Chance resemblances...

E fésto Robert Jung <RobertMJung@...>:
> Japanese <yoi> (/joi/ "good") reminds me of Hungarian /jo:/ (<jo'>). Is
> this a case of "chance resemblance" (as Mark Rosenfelder calls the
> looking-alike of Chinese <ren1> and Quechua <runa>, "person") or is
> there a connection?
Odds are remarkably slim.  Japanese /j/ has a tendency to descend from *d,
for one, and is most likely not in the same family as Hungarian to begin
with.

Starostin puts Japanese |í-|, |yó-| 'good', from a protoform *dǝ̀-
(Proto-Altaic *di̯òge), related to Korean čō(h)-, Khalkha ʒā, and Turkish
jeɣ, jej.   [I suppose those are phonetic representations.]




        *Muke!
--
http://frath.net/                  E jer savne zarjé mas ne
http://kohath.livejournal.com/     Se imné koone'f metha
http://kohath.deviantart.com/      Brissve mé kolé adâ.

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