"if any" v.s "if al all"

Why the secret, if at all? -- not good English (not in any interpretation that I can think of anyway).

Why the secret, if any? -- an unlikely thing to want to say. It would mean "Why is there a secret (relating to whatever's being discussed) -- if, in fact, there is a secret?"

Why is this a secret at all? -- means roughly the same as "Why is this a sec

Thanks, Mr. Wordy
Given that you are a native speaker, everything that does not make sense to you for me will be incorrect. Thus there shouldn't be any more discussion on this. Yet, I wonder if the first one "why the secret, if at all", which you said is not good English, can be used to mean "why the secret, if (it is a secret) at all" (almost) = " why is this a secret at all ". It's probably

"Why the secret, if at all?" would normally be understood to mean something like "Why the secret, if it is a secret at all?", just because this is the nearest thing it could be trying to say. But for some reason the rules of English don't (in my opinion) allow "Why the secret, if at all?" as a correct sentence. At first, I thought the reason was that "at all" is an adverb, and so is looking

Hi guys,

'If at all' seems adverbial to me.

eg How much do you like coffee, if at all?

Another way to look at this is that what you are really saying is How much do you like coffee, if you like coffee at all?

Basically, that's why 'Why the secret, if at all'? sounds wrong.

Best wishes, Clive

Thanks Clive, I was thinking along these lines, but managed to confuse myself with possibly imaginary difficulties with this explanation.