Only and often.

Where you place the words only and often in your sentences can make a difference in meaning. Sometimes if you put only or often in the wrong place, your readers will not be sure of what you are trying to say.

Students who go to discos often can fail their exams.

Does this mean:

Students who go to discos often/         fail their exams.

or is it instead:

Students who go to discos/            often fail their exams.

The above sentence might be trying to say that students who go to discos a lot fail their exams. Or the intended meaning could be that among the students who are found at discos at any time, many fail exams.

Similarly, a sentence such as the following is not clear:

A teaching assistant who grades student papers often suffers from migraine headaches.

Is this trying to say that a teaching assistant who frequently grades papers gets headaches, or does the person who grades papers get lots of headaches? Do we mean:

A teaching assistant who grades student papers often /         suffers from migraine headaches.

or

A teaching assistant who grades student papers/ often suffers from migraine headaches.

The same sort of confusion can happen if we are not careful where we place the word only.

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley only stayed three days.

Are we trying to say that these students only went to one place, Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley, and remained there for three days? Or do we wish to suggest that they went to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley, but were not able to enjoy more than a brief stay in this scenic spot? Is it

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley only / stayed three days.

or

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley/ only stayed three days.

How to solve the problem.

Modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that add descriptions to sentences. Some examples are the words only, just, nearly, and barely. One trademark of a modifier is that it changes or modifies a sentence. Yet if it is removed, what remains is a valid sentence. So without the modifier only, the above sentence would remain correct:

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley stayed three days.

If you use modifiers, be sure that they are placed as close as possible to the words they are meant to modify. Returning to the teaching assistant who gets pains in the head from considerable exposure to student work, if we rewrite the sentence as follows, the meaning becomes clear:

The teaching assistant who often grades student papers suffers from migraine headaches.

There is no question that we are discussing someone who has frequent contact with student work, and the number of migraine headaches is not being discussed in this sentence. Alternately, with our traveling students, the meaning would be clearer if we put the modifier as close as possible to what we intend to modify:

The students who only travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley stayed three days.

or

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley stayed only three days.

or

The students who travelled to Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Ley stayed three days only.

In all of the above examples, there is no problem understanding the intended meaning. Some experts in grammar have claimed that placing modifiers close to words being modified may not be necessary in all cases. Yet these experts are probably not thinking of writers of Thai English, who need to make their own writing as clear as possible to express their ideas in theses and academic articles. It is always worth taking extra trouble to make sure your written arguments are crystal clear.

Sophomores who ask for ajarns’ help with homework often can improve their grades.

The above sentence has more than one possible meaning. Is it trying to say that second year students who ask the ajarns lots of times for explanations get better academic results? Or is the meaning that the students who ask for explanations frequently get better grades? If we wrote the sentence as either of these two possibilities, the question would be solved:

Sophomores who often ask for ajarns’ help with homework can improve their grades.

or

Sophomores who ask for ajarns’ help with homework can often improve their grades.

Questions of frequency.

When dealing with issues of how often things happen, we often use adverbs of frequency. These include such words as always, never, normally, occasionally, often, rarely, seldom, sometimes, and usually. These adverbs tend to be placed before the most important verb in the sentence:

I often eat Khao kan chin with friends.

Yet if your sentence contains the verb to be, it is better that you put these adverbs after the verb.

She is always exhausted after studying all night.

I am never late for class.

It would not be correct to write either of the following:

She always is exhausted after studying all night.

I never am late for class.

The words often and only appear frequently together in sentences. They might be in headlines, such as for this article in The New York Times:

If Patients Only Knew How Often Treatments Could Harm Them.

On other occasions, often and only are used together in familiar quotations, such as this excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Fellowship of the Ring:

He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

The American poet Charles Bukowski once wrote:

Too often, the only escape is sleep.

The German-American cartoonist Oliver Gaspirtz stated:

Our words are often only vague, inadequate descriptions of our thoughts. Something gets lost in translation every time we try to express our thoughts in words. And when the other person hears our words, something gets lost in translation again, because words mean different things to different people… So when a thought is formed in my brain, and my mouth expresses it in words, and your ears hear it, and your brain processes it, your brain and my brain never truly see exactly the same thing. Communication is always just an approximation.

Keeping this in mind, we can also remember the English idiom only so often. This means that something happens, but does not happen all the time. It occurs from time to time, now and then. Only so often suggests that a limit on the frequency of whatever it is:

Most of my friends eat Indian food only so often.

For me, pizza is a dish I crave only so often, and no matter what the toppings, it still seems a bit limited by the fact that it is only bread and cheese.

The fast food restaurant serves great fried chicken that has you craving it every so often. I say only so often because it really is too greasy to have too often.

Chonlada spent lots of money at the beauty salon and spa, but she could do that only so often.

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)