Oral ~ Nasal Correspondences

[RLR]

> 'bean' also looks like a loan from UA

"Bean" has look-alikes in UA, but it is not reconstructable there
either.  The family where the 'bean' word seems to be native is Yuman.


> Another set that is strikingly similar is 'blue (~ green)', though I
> suppose it could be a coincidence.  We are dealing with monosyllables and
> disyllables of fairly simple form.

I don't know the 'blue' term, but 'bear' and 'bean' are at least
disyllables and the semantic matches are quite precise.  So we're not
dealing with the same kinds of chance resemblance problems that often
plague distant genetic comparisons. The interesting thing about 'bear'
is that it would have to be so early, since it's all over Siouan in one
form or another.

Bob