Spanish: An Essential Grammar

Adverbs not ending in -mente

Adverbs of manner

These include items such as bien‘well’, mal‘badly’, despacio‘slowly’,

deprisa‘quickly’, así‘like this/that’, mejor ‘better’, peor ‘worse’:

No se puede entrar vestida así.

You can’t go in dressed like that.

Mario nada despacio y mal.

Mario swims slowly and badly.

Adverbs of place

These state where. They can be both positionalreferring to a static loca-

tion, and also directionalindicating movement.

Comments on individual adverbs of place:

(a) Aquí‘here’, ahíand allí‘there’. Their relative positions are best under-

stood by relating them to demonstrative pronouns: este aquí‘this one here’,

ese ahí‘that one’ (near the person addressed), and aquel allí‘that one over

there’ (further away from both speaker and addressee).

(b) Acá‘here’ and allá‘there’ are less common in Peninsular usage. They

tend to express a less precise location than aquíand allí, or they indicate

movement afterir ‘to go’ andvenir ‘to come’. However, in many parts of

Latin America, especially southern South America, they have virtually

replaced aquíand allí:

¡Ven acá! Come here!

¡Ponlo en la papelera allá en el rincón!

Put it in the waste-paper basket over there in the corner!

Más allámeans ‘further away’, ‘beyond’:

La casa está un poquito más allá.

The house a little bit further on.

(c) Dentro/Adentro‘inside’ and fuera/afuera‘outside’. The longer forms

are [LA] only, except when used with verbs of motion:

7.2.2

7.2.1

(^1111) 7.2
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1011

1

12111

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

20111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

30111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

40

41111

Adverbs not

ending in

• mente

65