Hi,

Clemens Hintze wrote:

> >>>>> "Dat" == Dat Nguyen <thucdat / hotmail.com> writes:
>
>     >> From: Clemens Hintze <c.hintze / gmx.net> Reply-To:
>     >> ruby-talk / netlab.co.jp To: ruby-talk / netlab.co.jp (ruby-talk
>     >> ML) Subject: [ruby-talk:03659] Re: Perl and Ruby: an Irony
>     >> Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 09:05:00 GMT
>
> ...
>
>     Dat> Clement,
>
> Dat,
>
>     Dat> Take it easy, it's a compliment to the answer of my
>     Dat> question. I am exploring and learning a new language. Your
>
> sorry about that! I was thinking that it was NO compliment, but I was
> wrong here! Sorry again. As I said: my English is much worse than I
> thought :-(

Well, don't be too critical of your English.

English, like Perl, can readily be written in easy-to-misinterpret ways.
(This is why some very young programmers sometimes mistakenly think that
English evolved from Perl. :-)

In the original context of the first posted solution and rather
dismissive reply and subsequent posted solution and subsequent reply that
preceded your 1st post on this thread, I had to read that last reply
twice before I realized what was intended. Another reason for this
initial misunderstanding is that "Your salary is not 2 cents at all." is
expressed as a negation and also switches/distorts the original
sense/context of the "2 cents worth" idiom/metaphor in a way that is
often used for sarcastic remarks--e.g. with the implication that your
salry might be worth, say, 3 cents. This is similar to what is known as
"damning with faint praise"--i.e. giving such little praise (or giving
praise so indirectly) that the conventional implication is that one does
not really intend to give any praise at all.

Even for native English users, for purposes of clear communication it is
generally much better to say "Ruby is very good" rather than "Ruby is not
bad at all".

--
Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)