Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means horse in Japanese isn't exactly correc

Yep it's just the coincidence of a simple sound system and finding patterns where none exist. For example saying ba means horse in Japanese isn't exactly correct, horse is uma, ba is just the closest sound that exists which allows Japanese people to pronounce Chinese words like 馬力 circa whenever that word was added to the language, if they took it today it would be ma. It's the equivalent of Latin or Greek words and affixes in English.