Japanese relatives (was Re: Multiple decent langu

Nik wrote :

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,
*fairly* is a good, tempered adjective.

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).
Yes, Nik. Indonesian is a pidgin as you know. Its vocabulary and grammar is a Malay
best-of with Javanese solecisms re-visited by Dutch linguists. Not quite the
kind of brother Japanese dignity would daign consider. But don't blame me, I
never stepped into Javanese and Balinese and Toradjan, and Minangkabau (etc etc
etc) deeper than the little toe (very cold dongelongedongelongedong kind of
water it is) so I only know I don't know.

As for the grammar, the only correspondance I can think of is tha

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