Re: Malay for two: dua

On 2025-01-18, Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> wrote:

Today I have been thinking about my childhood in Singapore nearly 80
years ago. Something that has puzzled me over the years has been the
Malay word for 2, dua, which looks remarkably like the Latin word for
2. I suppose that it's no more than a chance similarity, as it's hard
to imagine that such a basic word should have been borrowed from a
European language. But does anyone know?

Well, Wiktionary...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dua#Malay

... traces it back to Proto-Austronesian *duSa, and at that entry lists
a sizable number of descendants, i.e., cognates of "dua", such as
Hawaiian "lua".

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de