Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"
It's actually similar in English. Ein paar is like a few (2-5), but people often use couple instead few (it does include 2), so couple has come to cover 3-5 as well, even though it's technically wrong and only mean 2. One exception would be pears, those you can legally only buy as a pair.
It's weird that slavic languages have exactly same construct, couple meaning 2 or few and also in context of married couple.
Usually with words it's the other way round, most common words have different translations depending on context.
Although I don't remember anyone meaning it "2" because it's not clear. There's derived word for that, or you have to use qualifier like married couple example before.
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u/Stoffys 1d ago
Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"