Classical Japanese Ya- 8 [Yattsu, Yasoji, Yahoyorozu kami]

These words are listed in my Japanese Kogo Jiten 古語辞典 (Classical Japanese Dictionary)

When I was at University, I was looking for patterns in numbers and noticed this... but this is also in the dictionary...
ya- や(8) is the translocation of yo- よ(4)
[Is mu- む(6) is the translocation of mi- み(3) ?  It's not in the dictionary but feasible...]

ya-tsu 八つ= 8
ya-so- 八十= 80 (yaso-ji is also listed but also means 80 yrs old)
ya-ho- 八百= 800
ya-chi- 八千= 8000
ya-yorozu 八万= 80000
ya-ho-yorozu- 八百万= 8 million

this last one is in the dictionary... きわめて数の多いのにいうこと ("refers to a very very large number") also "”神”にかかる枕詞のように用いる" (Also used as a 'pillow word' describing the gods. - A 'pillow word' is a poetical word (Makurakotoba on wikipedia)) - example:
"ya-ho-yorozu chi-yorozu kami no, kami tsudohi tsudohi imashite" "There were billions of gods... the gods were gathering"

It wouldn't be a literal translation - (8 million, 10 million)

ya-so- 八十-(80) appears to be used for 'many' ...

• yasokuni　八十国 (many countries)
• yasoshima 八十島 (many islands)
• yasokami 八十神 (many gods)
• yasoba 八十場 (many places)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasoshima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasoba_Station
http://www.flickr.com/photos/houtoku/4246615129/ (Yasoba town)

Interestingly there's a lot about Ya- .. hardly anything about Mu- (6)...

[Under Mi- (3)... mi-so-hito-moji (31 syllables - what do you get if you add up 5-7-5-7-7 tanka? = 31) - so perhaps that answers how you join them up.  Rather than "misoji mari hitotsu"]

Japanese Korean: Same same but different

Native, classical Japanese has a very different feel to Chinese and Korean. Especially to Chinese... Chinese and Japanese are not connected at all except for the adoption of Chinese characters.  Beyond the loan words from China that are Kanji-based, Japanese is totally foreign to Chinese - in nearly all respects.

Japanese and Korean share word order, but the basal language is very different.  Verb forms - to be - です(desu) or だ (da)- in Japanese and 입니다 (ip-ni-ta but pronounced - im-nida) or 이다 (i-da) in Korean.

And the words used to conjoin verb clauses act similarly but are phonetically different words:

English - It is my book but please go ahead... (and read/take it (implied meaning))

Japanese - 私の本だけど・ですが、どうぞ。。。

Reading - Watashi no hon da-kedo (/desu ga), dozo...　

Korean - (그건) 내 책이지만, 제발...

Reading - (keugon) ne ch'ek ijiman, chebal...

Watashi no = ne = My

Hon = ch'ek = Book

da/desu = i = is

kedo/ga = ch/jiman = but (verb affix)

douzo = chebal = please, go ahead...

I suppose this is similar to French English German... 

1) Je mange; I eat; Ich esse

2) Je vais; I go; Ich gehe

3) Je l'aime, mais il ne m'aime pas; I like him, but he doesn't like me; Ich mag ihn, aber er mag mich nicht.

These are very different words... but in Europe there are threads between languages... the meaning and pronunciation of words evolve/mutate through people/through history...  

LIKE... somewhere this is related to German 'gleich' (equal) .. via old English 'gelic' ...  we would have once said 'it likes me' ... 'it is like me' ... and so on... 

and "black" (from O.E. blaec) so similar to "blanc" "blanch"; "white" (from O.E hwit) "weiss" ... apparently 'black' replaced 'sweart' in Old English... from which we get swart, swarth, swarthy... and could be linked to Germanic 'schwarz' (black)

Where are the threads between languages in East Asian? ... 

Hawai'i - Hawaiki - Utsukushii - Utsukushiki

I am particularly interested in the 'Okina that exists in both Polynesian and Japanese... this is a glottal stop that hides an old 'k' sound...

In Polynesian, perhaps the best example is 'Hawai'i'... which may have been Hawaiki in old Polynesian.  In fact this is the name of the island in Maori and other Polynesian languages... (or Avaiki...)  The glottal stop (bicameral consonant or 7Okina) replaced the final 'k'...)

This loss of a 'k' also occurs between Classical Japanese and Modern Japanese.  Nothing is used to show a glottal stop, the glottal stop is hardly noticeable in Japanese.  うつくしい (u-tsu-ku-shi-i) once was written うつくしき (u-tsu-ku-shi-ki) as a declension of the -く (-ku) adjectival verb form.  (うつくしくに；うつくしき；うつくしかった；etc)

This loss of an 'ki' and the similarity/simplicity of the phonemes between Japanese and Polynesian languages always made me think that Japanese was an assimilation, much like English, of more than one race... long ago... Polynesians landing on the shores of Japan... overpowered from the north and from the west by peoples from Kamchatka, the Ainu in Hokkaido, and Koreans/Chinese from mainland Asia...  obviously the Kanji writing system was adopted from China since the 7-8th Century AD.  Hiragana and Katakana were developed much later after hundreds of years of using Man'yogana from these Kanji to represent individual mora (combination of consonant-vowel).

I wonder what people think of a long long ago link to Polynesia...?