I'm glad someone finally stepped in who knows what they're talking about
fully.  Just wanted to say thanks for explaining clearly what is the
proper way, so to speak.

:)

 Although one point:  The English/Navaho
analogy was way off.  At least Japanese was derived from Chinese.

No, it wasn't. This is one of the most common myths about the language.
Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language. Japanese... well, there is a huge
disagreement to what language family Japanese is, but it most certainly
isn't Sino-Tibetan. All of the Sino-Tibetan languages have tonal aspects to
them. That is to say, the change in pitch of the language actually carries
semantic meaning. The Sino-Tibetan languages also have an SVO deep
structure and is highly isolating.

On the other hand, Japanese is not tonal at all. For the most part, it has
a SOV deep structure, and carries a significant inflection. Not only that,
it's also highly sensitive to who you're talking to (differences in pronoun
use and verb formation depending on your social relationship to the
listener). In many ways, it bears more similarity to Turkish and the Altaic
languages.

Japanese did do a lot of lexical borrowing from Chinese, but that is
different. Far different.

 While
Navaho has nothing to do with English.  I am no linguistics expert, but
that much I'm certain of.

Well, I am more of a linguistics expert than you. I took a course. As I
said, this so-called "certainty" is a *myth.*


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