откуда такое?
ON the blackboard

When you see OFTEN in a sentence, it's probably a direct translation from Russian.

How true😀

Uly, did you mean we should not use OFTEN in a sentence? Where and how should we use it then?

There’s a science to using OFTEN like a native. Russians just pull it out of their asses whenever they see a часто. I’ll give you the details tomorrow - I’m bushed.

wow, i didn't know that. I thought OFTEN has been an easy word to use, had no idea there was a science ))) looking forward...

Наречие often обычно употр. в отриц предложениях, соответствуя русским утверд предложениям со словами редко, мало

We don't often meet
They don't often go to the theatre

Don't use ‘often’ to talk about something that happens several times within a short period of time.
Don't say, for example, ‘I often phoned her yesterday’.
You say ‘I phoned her several times yesterday’ or ‘I kept phoning her yesterday’.

That fear was expressed several times last week.
Rather than correct her, I kept trying to change the subject.

Don't say, for example, ‘I often phoned her yesterday’.

По-русски тоже не говорят "Я вчера ей часто звонил"

Ok, first off, when we DO use "often," it's almost exclusively in writing. In speech, we only ever really use it in the question HOW OFTEN when asking about the frequency of something: How often do you get to see your dad?
The younger generation, ONLY uses "often" in this way. In the general sense of часто, people tend to use A LOT in speech, or MUCH in negative contexts: I didn't call her a lot yesterday. I don't drink a lot. (and yes, this last example is ambiguous - it can mean много or часто, so to clarify, we would express the option with много as "I'm not a big drinker.") I don't see her much.

However, you're more likely to hear OFTEN if it's quantified by an adverb, because in the meaning "frequently," it's a weak word on its own: I see him quite often when I go to the gym. I don't see him very often anymore. Not too often at all.

In writing, we tend to put "often" right before the verb phrase (not at the beginning of the sentence!). This is a reflex from the use of Wackernagel’s Law in older forms of English. That law puts certain words as the second element in a sentence and treats them as clitics (much like your уж, ведь, же). So to the native speaker, OFTEN in front of the verb doesn't actually/literally mean “frequently," but something more like скорее всего or another vague, unstressed form that seeks to bring some new information to the listener. For instance: "I often wonder why today’s youth are so cruel.” Here, the speaker doesn’t really mean frequently, it’s more like “believe it or not” - and the whole statement has a feeling of “here’s something you may not know about me.”

This can also happen with SOMETIMES. At the beginning of a sentence, it’s an adverb. But before the verb phrase, it’s more of an insight into the speaker's way of thinking and can sound nostalgic, like a written sigh: "I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever even see my grandchildren grow up the way my health is declining."

So when DO we use OFTEN in the sense of "frequently"? At the end of the sentence and only if we're kind of emphasizing the frequency. "I know the restaurant - I go there óften." (note that we also stress it in speech)

Also note that at the beginning of a sentence, you can use VERY OFTEN,... This again, isn't literally "frequently," it's more like an emphatic form of Бывает... which gives a sentence a flavor of "you might be surprised to learn that..."

So looking at this post through native eyes, my initial interpretation of this would be "More often than not, we end up writing on the blackboard in class (and not really learning anything because the teacher's lazy and doesn't care what we do."

If the intention was to express actual frequency, I would say: "We write on the blackboard quite a bit in class."

Interestingly enough, we ALWAYS use NEVER in the Wackernagel position. Even when we put it at the beginning of the sentence, we follow it with the verb phrase through inversion: "Never have I seen such a lazy group of students!"

The same applies to ONLY - the only-phrase is followed by the verb phrase through inversion: "[ONLY WHEN I SAW HOW FAST SHE TYPED] DID I decide to hire her."

Uly, thank a lot. That's more than I expected.

Not a problem. I warned you it was a whole science 😉

Yea, I see. I often wonder how you find time for all this? Is a day in Florida has 36 hours instead of 24? Or the time flows slower?

Very good! Here you used OFTEN correctly - as an insight into your thinking, wondering 👍🏼

Uly, today I had to use often but not in the form of a question (how often). It had to be in the middle of a sentence. While typing the sentence I tried to come up with something else but could, hence used OFTEN. Can you have a look to see if there was any other option? Here is the sentence:
"When you update config files it writes the database credentials into the files as part of the connection string which is often encrypted".
As you can see above words A BIT, A LOT, MUCH wouldn't work. Any thoughts?

That’s correct because it’s unstressed and doesn’t mean часто, but rather something like скорее всего or even чаще всего.

good to know. thanks for the speedy reply.

The only thing wrong with that sentence is the missing comma, which makes a huge difference here. Before WHICH we use a comma when we add incidental information and not relevant information. For instance: Anna married my brother, who’s a doctor = one of my brother’s who happens to be a doctor; Anna married my brother who’s a doctor = the only brother of all my brothers who is also a doctor. The correct use of OFTEN in your sentence is made even more natural because it figures in an incidental statement - additional information which is MORE THAN LIKELY the case.