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Off of

Posted by Lewis on June 19, 2003

In Reply to: Off of posted by sphinx on June 17, 2003

: : off of = "from"?

: may I ask, are you a native speaker?

: and do you konw what does "do not all match" mean?

"Native speaker"? Mmm - if you mean is English my first language - yes. To be frank, I only have a small amount of knowledge of other languages, although I can speak reasonable American English as well as my native British English!

"Do not all match" would mean that there is a group of objects that have already been described ("all") and that some of those objects do not fit the pattern of are dissimilar ("do not...match").

English grammer is very felxible and does not have rules that some other languages have - e.g. in German a sentence should state details in the order of "Time Manner Place" - so that it would only be correct to say "On Tuesday, we walked in the park" rather than "We walked in the park on Tuesday" or "We walked on Tuesday in the park".
It would have been easier for you to understand if the person had said "not all [of the objects] match" or even "not all match". In English it is sometimes acceptable to leave out words which the reader/listener must then guess from the context. It leads to uncertainty, but can improve the speed of communication.

I hope that helps.

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