Re: Nostratic

From: Rex F. May (rex.may_at_comcast.net)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:42:40 GMT

in article 414BD1EF.4177@alphalink.com.au, Jacques Guy at
jguy@alphalink.com.au wrote on 9/18/04 12:13 AM:

> Rex F. May wrote:
>
>>>> Would this, too, be "either coincidence or genetic"?
>>>> Latin mulg-e:re 'to milk'
>>>> Saami mielga 'breast'
>>>> Hungarian mell 'breast'
>>>> Tamil mulai 'breast'
>>>> Malayalam mulai 'breast'
>
>> Hm. I'm agnostic about the whole thing, but how many such examples are
>> there out there, and could they be explained by borrowing?
>
> No need. There are thousands of words to pick, in thousands of
> languages. The truly extraordinary thing would be if you
> could not find a dozen or two (or three, of five) that do
> look the same in a dozen of unrelated languages.
>
> And anyway, Tamil and Malayalam are both Dravidian languages,
> so strike one out, and the wondrous evidence shrinks to
> Latin, Saami, Hungarian, Tamil.
>
> And, if I remember correctly, Saami is closely related to
> Finnish, more distantly to Hungarian, so strike one out,
> and the wondrous evidence shrinks to Latin, Saami, Tamil.
>
> It's the usual "Wow! Birds have two wings and fly, and so do
> bats and jumbo jets, so jumbo jets and bats have feathers
> and lay eggs."

That's about what I expected, which is why I asked how many such examples
there were. As they say:

"Are Chinese and English related?"

"Shr!"

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