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Comment by tanto | Hacker News Reader

I am curious. What exactly is wrong with "some few words"? In german it would make total sense.

It's just not common in an idiomatic way, really. Technically, it is 'incorrect' because 'few' is the object of the sentence, not 'words'.

But there are plenty of examples of phrases in English which are acceptable but which break grammar rules.

In short, you would say "a few words".

In Spanish you should also say "unas pocas palabras" (perhaps jdiez is an Spanish name). The adjective of Google perhaps should be in lowercase. Remember perhaps should be recall. As I almost never speak English I (don't have the opportunity or the like of it) I find it very difficult I will ever grok English, but that is my ever unsatisfied greater aspiration (aside from getting a bigger salary and other pleasures for a young male man).

I'm not sure if it is "wrong," per se, but not idiomatic. Here (in the midwestern part of the US, at least) you would pick one or the other, so "some words" or "a few words."

You can't say "some few". Either are fine, but not together.

It makes sense to me, but I'm not a native speaker either so I don't know if there's an actual rule behind this.

Sometimes you use few with a countable name. Some is for not countable. A few friends means that you know perfectly how many friends you have, if you have some friends the number of friends you have is subject to a great uncertainty from 1 to infinity. So some few is saying you have few but are uncertain or don't want to say how many, but that is not very rational. Why this reasoning? Because it can help you to avoid repeating the same error (or unidiomatic expression). The simple fact of analyzing any mistake it a way of becoming vaccinated against it.

It's probably ok. Just not extremely common.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/some-fe...

As a note, while, as others have mentioned, it's non-idiomatic, and dropped in casual speech would come across as a trifle awkward, it -can- be made tenable in sufficiently florid prose that is clearly intended to be delivered verbally.

That is, while "some few" is ungainly, pausing and delivering it as though 'few' is reinforcing or clarifying 'some' (through a change in tone or similar) would sound a little archaic, perhaps, but completely natural.

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