AdverbsAdverbs are words that describe the action of the verb, i.e. they give further information
about how, when or why the action is being done. The most common type of adverbs are
circumstance adverbs, which answer the question ‘how?’:
e.g. John ran quickly down the road.
‘Quickly’ tells us how John ran and so it is an adverb (in this case a ‘circumstance’
adverb). Other examples of circumstance adverbs are: ‘slowly’, ‘well’, ‘badly’, ‘easily’,
etc.
Some adverbs refer to the whole sentence rather than just to the verb:
e.g. Fortunately John could swim.
‘Fortunately’ does not tell us anything about how John could swim, rather it refers to the
whole sentence ‘John could swim’. This type of adverb is called a sentence adverb.
Adverbs can generally be formed in Spanish from their corresponding adjective by
simply adding -mente to the feminine singular form of the adjective:
e.g. adjective rápido quick
adverb rápidamente quickly
adjective afortunado fortunate
adverb afortunadamente fortunately
If the adjective does not have a distinctive feminine form, the -mente is added to the
common singular form:
e.g. adjective fuerte strong
adverb fuertemente strongly
Some adverbs do not follow this rule and you will just have to learn them as you come
across them. The most common irregular adverbs are:
bien well
mal badly
Exercises1 The adjectives at the end of the sentence are all in the masculine singular form. Insert
them in the sentence and change them (if necessary) into the appropriate form:
1 La niña es . (guapo)
2 El perro es . (negro)
3 Los profesores son . (alto)
4 La casa es . (pequeño)
Adjectives and adverbs 55