Re: [OT] Indian C programmers and "u"

From: Jeremy Yallop (jeremy_at_jdyallop.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: 11/27/03 

Date: 27 Nov 2003 13:06:13 GMT

Thomas Stegen wrote:
> Jeremy Yallop wrote:
>
>> This is simply untrue. Any native English speaker will understand "in
>> general" to mean "in most cases", although it also has other meanings,
>> particularly in a more formal context. That you are apparently
>> ignorant of such meanings illustrates my point.
>
> That someone well versed in programming
> absolutely refuses to admit that general can mean "unless otherwise
> specified" implies only quarrelsome behaviour to me.

But that is what *you* refused to admit:

  It does not mean for all cases, or even most cases. If something is
  true for 10000 cases and false for 1 case it is not true in general.

and elsethread:

  The general case is not most cases.

"does not mean" and "is not" do not admit of any exceptions. If you
intended to indicate otherwise then you failed, because a number of
native speakers understood that you were excluding other possibilities.

Mark McIntyre wrote in reply:
> This is rubbish. It /is/ true in general.

Neil Butterworth replied, also to you:
> Completely wrong.

and correctly concluded:
> I take it English is not your native language?

He was able to conclude this because you misunderstood "in general"
*as an English expression*. You correctly understand the meaning of
"in general" in a mathematical context, and you are apparently aware
of some of its other meanings, but the fact that you did not
understand the phrase as native speakers of English would (and did)
shows that the language you are using does not entirely correspond to
English.

It is simply absurd to claim that you have a better grasp of English
than native speakers beacuse whatever native speakers speak *is*
English, by definition.

>> Here are the first
>> few uses of "in general" that I found in the British National Corpus:
>
> [snip]
>
>> In none of these examples does "in general" have the meaning you
>> claim. It is used as a qualifier, and means approximately "most".
>
> Neither do they dispute my claim (and when you first bring up dictionary
> examples, yes there are many many that supports me and us.

But the whole point is that these are *not* dictionary examples! The
difference between a dictionary and a corpus is central to this whole
discussion.

Jeremy.