Note 955 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
Such "identities" as Tic. drejà = Aym. chacha (man); etai = utax (house) etc., are not convincing, especially in the absence of any scientific study of the laws of Lautverschiebung, if any exist between the Aymara-Ticuna phonetic systems. And then the question of loan words has to be settled before any safe conclusions can be drawn from such assumed resemblances. The point is important in the present connection, because current statements regarding the supposed reduction of the number of stock languages in South America are largely based on the unscientific comparison of lists of words, which may have nothing in common except perhaps a letter or two like the m in Macedon and Monmouth. Two languages (cf. Turkish and Arabic) may have hundreds or thousands of words in common, and yet belong to fundamentally different linguistic families.