french chien, german hund, italian cano, and portuguese cao are all dog. They all have vastly different pronunciations, but they all trace their origins to a single proto-indo-european word. And in english, we use that same word to mean hunt, because that's what dogs do for us.
so the question is not whether words are pronounced the same, but whether they can be traced back through a lineage. where the sound does offer clues when taken as part of a larger tapestry. Another comment here says that the french huh is written (and presumably pronounced) hein. Well isn't that interesting? huh-hunt and hein-chien? (french uses irregular phonetic spelling because it used to be pronounced differently than today) Can we find a pattern of similar changes that would lead us to believe that the historical ancestor word of huh-hien was in use by an early tribe of people before their descendents separated deviated, physically and linguistically?
so, that's in essence a good piece of what linguists study; as in all areas of expertise, non-experts have difficulty contributing as their anecdotal experience has frequently already been catalogued and is part of the hypothesis.
That's the point though, there is no evidence linking these words to anything related.
The icelandic 'ha' and spanish 'ke' sound nothing alike and have no known relation.
The authors are trying to suggest that because everyone has these short responses that they must be related.. which only makes sense if you don't stop to think about how languages are formed.
I can’t remember where I read it but apparently the etymology of the word dog is not known. Old English used hund (or something similar) and sometime between then and now ‘dog’ turned up. Of course we could still say hound and people would most likely understand you meant dog.
The more commonly the thing comes up in conversation, the shorter the word tends to be.
Given how vast the pronunciations are (even in the examples they chose), I think they are creating an illusory correlation.