> Why are [first-person singular pronouns] so similar if the languages are so far apart? The answer can only be chance, convergent evolution, or a genetic relat

> Why are [first-person singular pronouns] so similar if the languages are so far apart? The answer can only be chance, convergent evolution, or a genetic relationship. There is also another possibility: the linguist doing the reconstruction was invested in the theory and cherry-picked the data. E.g. the list of first-person singular pronouns contains these entries: Austronesian: ’a(ŋ)kƏn Afro-Asiatic: anāku which are so simlar that I decided to verify and check Wikipedia, which has slightly different reconstructions Austronesian: i-aku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Austronesian_language#Pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Austronesian_language#Pr... Afro-Asiatic: (ʔ)ân-/(ʔ)în- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Afroasiatic_language#Pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Afroasiatic_language#Pro... and suddenly one of the examples supporting the theory ends up contradicting it, while the other still has "n", but is otherwise far removed from the reconstruction presented in the article. I don't think the reconstructions on Wikipedia are necessarily more correct, but they do demonstrate that there is significant leeway when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of specific consonants. And if you have a dozen options to choose from, it's quite easy to turn random noise into a strong signal.