I attended a meeting yesterday. Today I received notes as taken down and transcribed by the head office secretary. In it, was a summary of a discussion of layoffs. The sentence, quoted exactly from the notes was

"We have few vacant positions being eliminated."

I was there, and what I heard was, "We have a few vacant positions being eliminated."

I asked the secretary about the discrepancy. I was not able to communicate to him how big a difference there is in the meanings of the two sentences. In his mother tongue, this type of distinction does not exist, the use of definite and indefinite articles or their non-use.

What a difference a little word makes.