"etherman23"
wrote:

> --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jdcroft@...> wrote:
> > wi 'I', tw 'you (masc)', tn 'you (fem)', sw (he, him), sy and st
> > (she, her), *-n 'we', *-tn 'you (plural)', *-sn 'they'
> >
> > whereas in Basque the pronoun set is
> >
> > ni `I`, hi `you' (singular intimate), zu `you' (singular

unmarked),

> > gu `we', zuek `you' (plural). The intimate hi is of

extraordinarily

> > restricted use: it is regularly used only between siblings and
> > between close friends of the same sex and roughly the same age.

It

> > may optionally be used in addressing children.
> >
> > Unlike vocabulary items, pronoun sets tend to be conserved
> > enormously. As you see there is very little similarity between
> > Ancient Egyptian and the Basque language.
>
> Isn't the connection obvious? A few simple sound change laws

applied

> to Basque gives the Egyptian pronouns.
>
> n /V [+front] > nw > w
> Hence ni > wi
>
> z /_V [+back] > d > t
> u has w as al allomorph
> Hence zu > tw
>
>
> g /_V [+back] > n
> u /C_# [+nasal] > 0
> Hence gu > n
>
> Finally zuek > tn through analogy.
>
> This is all pretty basic stuff you know.

OK, now lets look at English

ni (Egyptian) with the shift from n --> m makes "mi" (me) English

tw (Egyptian) becoming an affrictive th thus tw --> "thou" English

sy (Egyptian) with the s --> sh and a shortening of y to i
makes "shi" (she)

We could use exactly the same "Basic stuff" between any two
languages. The question is doe these transformations hold elsewhere
or are they in the mind of the beholder. The transformations are
possible but are they probable? For this we need repetition on
sufficient scale to show the pattern is real (rather than invented,
as is my case with Egyptian to English).

Regards

John