re : 6 . 797 , comparative method : n - ary comparison critics of manaster ramer miss the main point : janhunen calls by " similarities " parallels between japanese and other altaic languages based on regular phonetic correspondences without bothering to prove that these are real " look - alikes " . the parallels based on regular correspondences are not chance or random parallels and therefore the proposed statistical games do not apply to the case . if you do not believe it , take any pair of a priori unrelated languages , such as for example mandarin and eskimo , and try to establish regula r phonetic correspondences . needless to say , adding to this company zulu , basque , and nivx is not going to " improve " the picture . alexander vovin avvovin @ miamiu . acs . muohio . edu