>>>>>Just like a sentence I overheard in the news, "the incident could hurt the relations between both countries". Great observation! Imagine if they omitted the word "both" - the viewers could think that it may hurt relations between one of them but not the other.
>>>>
>>>>Hmmm, not necessarily. If they ommitted "both" then the sentence would suggest "all" nations, i.e. everyone would suffer. If they's already specified the nations then a simple "the" would have sufficed.
>>>
>>>Actually, it was "both of the two"... where just "the two" would be enough. That's what writing for the news does to your language - you always try to zip the info into... not necessarily fewer words, but fewer sentences. And then you get even worse than this.
>>
>>Ah, well you never said "both of the two" which is clearly ridiculous, like saying "she gave birth to two twins" :-)
>
>And then the twins can be
>- both the same
>- both different
>- one of each kind
>
>But you knew that.

Just as I knew that twins ONLY EVER come in twos!