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  • Malay for two: dua

    From Athel Cornish-Bowden@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jan 18 18:46:29 2025
    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?

    --
    Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
    in England until 1987.

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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Athel Cornish-Bowden on Sun Jan 19 09:11:03 2025
    On 19/01/2025 6:46 a.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden 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?


    Yes, it's a chance similarity. Cognates of dua are found all over
    Austronesian (Maori rua etc etc).
    The chance similarities go a little further: 3, telu (not the basic word
    in Malay) and 4, empat.
    dua, telu, empat could sound a bit like Latin du-, tri-, quat-. One of
    the great early Indo-Europeanists, Franz Bopp, was sufficiently
    impressed with this, and with words like kepala 'head' (which are
    actually borrowed from Sanskrit), that he proposed a relation between
    the two families. This was not generally accepted.

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Athel Cornish-Bowden on Sat Jan 18 20:27:46 2025
    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

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  • From Ruud Harmsen@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jan 25 06:43:20 2025
    Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:46:29 +0100: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
    scribeva:

    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?

    No, but I can look it up. Why didn't you? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dua#Malay https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dua#Indonesian

    So they're unrelated. It's a chance similarity.
    --
    Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

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  • From Athel Cornish-Bowden@21:1/5 to Ruud Harmsen on Sun Jan 26 18:53:05 2025
    On 2025-01-25 05:43:20 +0000, Ruud Harmsen said:

    Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:46:29 +0100: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> scribeva:

    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?

    No, but I can look it up. Why didn't you?

    Ross is expert on Malayo-Polynesian languages, and I have far more
    confidence in what he says than in what some unknown person says. Some
    of the definitions one finds on Wiktionary are fine; some are not.

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

    So they're unrelated. It's a chance similarity.

    Did you bother to read the earlier answers before repeating them?


    --
    Athel cb

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