neither the Chinese languages nor Taiwan's aboriginal languages are related to Japanese.

the Japanese are pretty open about the idea that they "borrowed" their writing system from the Chinese. some of the character have the same meaning, but different pronounciations. (so the symbol for "house" might look the same in both countries, but one might be pronounced house and the other casa-- and the meanings aren't identical--cottage and mansion are both english words for houses, but not the same idea except in the most general way.)

my sister is (has been) learning japanese, and she was explaining big numbers this summer, it was something on the order of one hundred 80's (for 8,000) and there was a word for thousand too, (since it was a big number-- we were talking house prices

--what got her was thinking of the number in japanese in yen, and the translating to english and dollars...
Since apparently for very big numbers you say a thousand 800's (8,000,000) or a thousand 8000's. (80,000,000) discussing numbers into the billions is harder..


my other obsession