Kip wrote: " 9000 years has been long enough for French, Celtic, Greek and Hindi to diverge from a common tongue. The similarity is almost certainly coincidental. " Thanks, Kip. I know nothing about Celtic and not much about French, but there are many similarities between Hindi (or rather Sanskrit) and Classical Greek - some of them striking. What I really want to know is how to grow those lilies here in Maryland. Jim McKenney -----Original Message----- From: "Kipp McMichael" [kimcmich@hotmail.com] Date: 10/04/2011 07:47 PM To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Re: [pbs] planting offsets > Now, here's a question for those of you with experience with the indigenous languages of western North America. Is the -san in Shuksan in any way related to the common Japanese honorific -san as in Fuji-san? Jim, I don't think there are any established or theorized connections between Japanese (sometimes classified as an Altaic language) and any of the Amerind (American Indian) tongues. There have been studies linking certain Amerind languages to Asian tongues but Japanese is not one of them. Even if pacific northwest Indiana tongues and Japanese shared a common ancestor, the time separating them (6,000-10,000 years minimum - likely longer) is so long that linguistic divergance would likely have obliterated any straightforward similarities. 9000 years has been long enough for French, Celtic, Greek and Hindi to diverge from a common tongue. The similarity is almost certainly coincidental. -|<