确认 Double Confirm

与友人到商场购物，友人看中了一样食品，想问问价钱，刚好有一位服务员经过，便向她请教。她以罕见的英语回答，说她也不大肯定，让她去向同事再确认。“Let me go and double confirm." 这是她说的话。友人属于那个不需要第二语文的年代，虽是华人，却只 懂得讲英语。他问我：为什么说 double confirm? 单单 confirm 不就够了，说double 是多余的。旅居国外的他不知道这就是本地人说英语的习惯。本来是多余的，但久而久之，不需要的也成为需要的了。 I accompanied a friend on a shopping spree. He chanced to see something that he liked and wanted to know the price. The price tag was somewhere lying around, together with price tags of other goods. To make sure, we got hold of someone in uniform and asked her. Surprisingly, she could speak English and was quite friendly. "Let me go and double confirm," she said. My friend grew up in the days when you do not need a second language and he was living abroad for quite some time.He asked me: why do you need to double confirm when you can just say confirm? The 'double' is redundant here. Alas! He did not realise that it was local English he was listening to. When you listen to such 'redundancies' day in and day out, you would soon have to accept them and let them pass.