I wonder if perhaps an older dialect used to pronounce the W. Lots of words have changed spelling or pronunciation over the years, so I’m curious if that might be the case with “two”, too.
I wonder if perhaps an older dialect used to pronounce the W.
That’s correct, and it isn’t even that old - based on the [o:]→[u:] change it should be from 1500 or so. And the modern Scots cognate ⟨twa⟩ /twɑ:/~/twɔ:/ still has it.
I wonder if perhaps an older dialect used to pronounce the W. Lots of words have changed spelling or pronunciation over the years, so I’m curious if that might be the case with “two”, too.
That’s correct, and it isn’t even that old - based on the [o:]→[u:] change it should be from 1500 or so. And the modern Scots cognate ⟨twa⟩ /twɑ:/~/twɔ:/ still has it.