I heard this the other day while watching an instructional video.
Problem:
The speaker used the wrong adjective.
Explanation:
The instructional video was about Keyword Elite, a tool for generating keywords and optimizing the placement of advertisements on search engines.
I believe that the narrator of the video is Brad Callen, a genius when it comes to Internet marketing.
Brad was discussing how a non-native-English speaker very easily can misspell a keyword when searching for something.
He then picked on himself and said that he likely would misspell a keyword, too, if he were “not affluent in that language”.
I strongly suspect that Brad’s use of the adjective “affluent” where the adjective “fluent” was required was simply a slip of the tongue.
So I am not picking on Brad, who seems to be a native speaker of American English or perhaps Canadian English. I could not quite pinpoint the accent.
Instead, I believe that his gaffe teaches us two lessons:
- It teaches us to lighten up when it comes to language mistakes. Anyone can make them — even geniuses. And you have to admit that being “affluent in that language” is a humorous phrase!
- It teaches us to have patience with non-native speakers of our language. After all, if someone as smart as Brad can slip up with his own language, then imagine how easy it is for a non-native speaker to use the wrong word.
Solution:
“… not fluent in that language …”