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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Malay for two: dua
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:53:05 +0100
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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