Alternative ways to replace albeit

Question

What are the best words to replace albeit in this sentence?

"I say albeit regretfully"

Does "however" or "although" suits it well? Or are there better words?

Answer 1

I say albeit regretfully

This sentence is alright but needs some modifications as follows:

• I said, albeit regretfully. (A complete stand-alone/independent sentence, indicating past action.)

• I say, albeit regretfully [...] (The brackets indicating that there should be predicate phrase after it, because present tense without it sounds weird, not incorrect though.)

Without a predicate phrase in the above sentence, it would mean that you always regret what you say, since the present tense would then depict a habitual action.

Now, with moving to the alternative suggestion.

One must remember, albeit is a conjunction, and it does what conjunctions do—it connects clauses. Albeit can be used with concessive clauses and subordinate clauses. What you can’t do with albeit but can certainly do with although is introduce independent clauses. This is one of the reasons why the two words are not always interchangeable. (From Grammarly)

For example:

We decided to buy the car, albeit the price made us hesitate. (Incorrect)

We decided to buy the car, although the price made us hesitate. (Correct)

In your case, you can use the alternatives interchangeably.

• I said, although regretfully, [...]

• I said, (even) though regretfully, [...] ('even though' is used as a stronger way to say "though" or "although")

• I said, notwithstanding regretfully, [...] (an unusual case)

• I said, even if regretfully, [...]

This blog article might help you in future.
This Google Ngram might as well be remotely helpful to you.