I have no problem at all with occasional grammar or usage mistakes by anyone. After all, mistakes are part and parcel of our being human, and, of course, life is a continuing learning experience. What gets me is when people hold on to their wrong grammar and usage for dear life even if the evidence to the contrary has become overwhelming! This particularly applies to some academics and self-styled experts who have built their reputations on their presumed infallibility. They simply couldn’t be wrong, and anybody who says otherwise is an ignoramus!
A refreshing exception to such people is a poet at heart who lives in Spain, Hill R., who asked me this question:
CHELSEA CLINTON (WITH HER FATHER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT CLINTON) AND ACTOR
HARRISON FORD FIGURED IN THAT BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH FORUM MEMBER
HILL H. ON A SEPARATE AND EARLIER OCCASION IN 2009
“Is there something wrong with this title of my piece, ‘My Close Encounter With Chelsea Clinton and Harrison Ford, Albeit Briefly’? Was I right to convert the adjective ‘brief’ to the adverb ‘briefly’?
“Of course, if I were to say, ‘I met them briefly,’ we know it’s correct. However, because I added the conjunction ‘albeit,’ did it make the title of the piece gravely incorrect?
“I just opened the
Oxford English Dictionary and found that ‘brief,’ if used as an adjective, couldn’t be converted into ‘briefly’ after all! Over the years, I’ve heard BBC journalists say ‘
Briefly please, we haven’t got time...’ I never thought it to be embarrassingly wrong!”
My reply to Hill: Yes, Hill, I think your use of “briefly” in the title “My Close Encounter With Chelsea Clinton and Harrison Ford, Albeit Briefly” is grammatically erroneous, but it’s not because “brief” can’t be converted into “briefly.” It’s because “briefly” is an adverb that by definition should modify a verb or an adjective, but there’s none of either—none that “briefly” can modify in “My Close Encounter With Chelsea Clinton and Harrison Ford, Albeit Briefly.” (The adjective “close” modifies “encounter” and has no grammatical link with the adverb “briefly.”) Indeed, that title is a noun phrase that can only be modified by an adjective: “My Close Encounter With Chelsea Clinton and Harrison Ford, Albeit
Brief.” The noun that the adjective “brief” modifies is, of course, “encounter.”
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with BBC journalists saying “
Briefly please, we haven’t got time...” That statement is actually an ellipted (shortened and streamlined) version of the sentence “
Please say it briefly; we haven’t got time...” The verb “say” is in hiding in “
Briefly please, we haven’t got time...”, and it is that invisible verb that’s being modified by the adverb “briefly.”
This reply drew the following rejoinder from Hill:“Thank you, Joe. I knew it was a grave, embarrassing error a day after I posted that particular piece on Facebook. In fact, on FB, ‘What’s on your mind,’ I put the question to FB users themselves, and no one bothered to say, ‘Hoohohooo, wrong, Hill! It should be...’
“Joe, I’ve never been afraid to admit mistakes, not even when I was very young, because that was how I was brought up by my parents. My father would say, ‘If you really think you’re right, argue that you’re right, but if you know you’re wrong, admit it and say, ‘Oops, sorry...I stand corrected.’ One should never be afraid to apologize, admit one’s slipups, and I don’t have any hang-ups whatsoever about that. We learn every day and my mother and her sisters, my sisters and cousins and aunts, having been all educators at one time or another, shared the same outlook.”
***
P.S. My son Carlo was looking over my shoulder as I wrote this column and he said that “albeit” sounds obsolete, and that it looks like one of those lawyer or professor words meant to intimidate laypeople. “No, it’s very much current,” I replied. “It’s kept alive mostly by lawyers and academics, but I’d rather use ‘if only.’ It’s plainer, simpler, more pleasant.”
(2009) This essay, 668th in the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the December 5, 2009 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
