Editing Dual (grammatical number) (section)

== Use in modern languages ==
Among living languages, [[Modern Standard Arabic]] has a mandatory dual number, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. (First-person dual forms, however, do not exist; compare this to the lack of third-person dual forms in the old Germanic languages.) Many of the spoken Arabic dialects have a dual marking for nouns (only), and its use can be mandatory in some dialects, and not mandatory in others. Likewise, [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] had a dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like "two hands", "two eyes", and "two arms". The dual in [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] has also atrophied, generally being used for only time, number, and natural pairs (like body parts) even in its [[Biblical Hebrew|most ancient form]].

[[Inuktitut]] and the related [[Central Alaskan Yup'ik language]] use dual forms; however, the related [[Greenlandic language]] does not (though it used to have them).

[[Khoekhoegowab]] and other [[Khoe languages]] mark dual number in their person-gender-number [[enclitics]], though the [[neuter gender]] does not have a dual form.

[[Austronesian languages]], particularly [[Polynesian languages]] such as [[Hawaiian language|Hawaiian]], [[Niuean language|Niuean]], and [[Tongan language|Tongan]], possess a dual number for pronouns but not for nouns, as nouns are generally marked for plural syntactically and not morphologically.  Other Austronesian languages, particularly [[Languages of the Philippines|those spoken in the Philippines]], have a dual first-person pronoun; these languages include [[Ilokano language|Ilokano]] ({{lang|ilo|data}}), [[Tausug language|Tausug]] ({{lang|tsg|kita}}), and [[Kapampangan language|Kapampangan]] ({{lang|pam|ìkatá}}). These forms mean "we", but specifically "you and I". This form once existed in [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]] ({{lang|tl|katá}} or sometimes {{lang|tl|kitá}}) but has disappeared from standard usage (save for certain dialects such as in [[Batangas Tagalog|Batangas]]) since the middle of the 20th century, with {{lang|tl|kitá}} as the only surviving form (e.g. {{lang|tl|Mahál kitá}}, loosely "I love you").

The dual was a standard feature of the [[Proto-Uralic language]], and lives on in the [[Samoyedic languages|Samoyedic branch]] and in most [[Sami languages]], while other members of the family like [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[Estonian language|Estonian]], and [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] have lost it. Sami languages also feature dual pronouns, expressing the concept of "we two here" as contrasted to "we". [[Nenets languages|Nenets]], two closely-related [[Samoyedic languages]], features a complete set of dual [[possessive suffix]]es for two systems, the number of possessors and the number of possessed objects (for example, "two houses of us two" expressed in one word).

The dual form is also used in several modern Indo-European languages, such as [[Irish language|Irish]], [[Scottish Gaelic]], [[Slovene language|Slovene]], and [[Sorbian languages|Sorbian]] (see below for details).  The dual was a common feature of all early Slavic languages around the year 1000.