| ▲ | Two9A 3 hours ago | |
Arabic is on the Semitic branch of the hypothesised proto-Indo-European language, which has dual number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number) So you'd expect to see languages from western Europe to south Asia that either have the dual concept, or have an attested ancestor that did. | ||
| ▲ | eigenspace 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
The Semitic language family is not part of the proto-indo-european language family. It's from the Afroasiatic family | ||
| ▲ | another-dave 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Within Indo-European languages, Irish has the concept of the dual. It's used with things that come in pairs like "mo dhá láimh" - my two hands. Interestingly, to say one-handed you'd say "leath-lámh", where _leath_ means half, so half the <thing that's usually one of a pair>. | ||
| ▲ | mathieuh 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Semitic languages are Afroasiatic, not Indoeuropean. | ||