Chance resemblances

A. Yet a problem remains: there are many chance resemblances between words with similar meanings in any two languages. Here are examples from English and Japanese, which no linguist considers to be related in any significant way.

B. A language can have only so many consonants together and so many vowels together: there is a limit on the degree to which syllables in human language can vary. This shows the danger in the “eyeballing” strategy.