Welcome to Grammar & Style Tidbits with Snap Language.
[♫ Snap Language Theme song ♫]
[voiceover] “You’re gonna dig this!”
Hi, Marc Franco here.
Thanks for watching this video.
We want to believe that everything in grammar is neat and tidy
and that you can always explain how everything works, right?
Well, the truth is, a lot happens in language
that kinda “breaks” the rules because it’s based on usage.
Well, then we have to come up with some other rule
to explain that.
You know... to pretend it’s all orderly.
Take adjectives and adverbs, for example.
You say “I read the document quickly,”
but you can also say, “Think quick!”
Wait!
If “quick” is the adjective and “quickly” is the adverb,
why don’t we say “Think quickly!”
“Don’t overthink it!
Think quickly!”
Ooo... that sounds weird.
Well, how we use adjectives and adverbs in English
is a little more complicated than the way they taught us in school.
Let’s put these troublesome adjectives into some categories.
But, before we do that...
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Awesome!
Let’s get back to the categories of troublesome adverbs
1. Adjectives and adverbs with identical forms
Some adverbs have the same form as the adjectives they’re related to.
They’re the easiest to remember in the bunch, I think.
“This is a fast car” but “Don’t drive so fast!”
“If you work hard, you’ll go far.”
(There’s no such a thing as “farly.”)
(Besides, they all say that until you ask
for a raise or a promotion... right?)
“He’s a tough guy” but “he can talk tough.”
(Well, I guess he wants to be heard.)
“I’ll see you soon.”
(Well, it’s hard to even find “soon” as an adjective!)
“What seems to be awry?”
“My plans went awry.”
By the way, check the link to RELATED MATERIALS
in the description for this video.
Some videos have a lesson on our website so you can
dig deeper into the topic.
2. Bare adverbs and their -ly forms
Some adverbs have the same form as the adjectives they’re related to.
These are called bare adverbs, flat adverbs, or simple adverbs.
But historically, many people, especially grammarians, insisted on adding
the -ly ending to these.
As a result, many of these became interchangeable.
For example, you can say “Breathe deep”
using the adverb in its bare form,
but in formal English, especially in writing, some people insist on saying,
“Breathe deeply.”
People feel more comfortable with it in formal English because they think,
if you can add the -ly ending to the adverb,
it’s probably, uh, “more correct” (if that’s a thing).
Now people get confused by this.
“The sun shines bright in the desert” (or brightly, to be formal)
“Think quick!”
Mmm “quickly” sounds stilted here, but, oh well.
“You dress very sharp.”
(or sharply...)
Actually, I think most people would say “you’re a sharp dresser”
and just avoid the awkward adverb altogether.
“Wild animals should run free.”
Again, “freely” would sound more formal here.
It just... sounds weird, and freely could be misunderstood as
“without interference” or “openly.”
3. Different meanings
Another easy group to remember are adverbs that mean different things
if they’re used in their bare form or with the -ly ending.
Well, I should say these are
easy to remember unless you’re learning English as a new language.
Imagine the confusion!
“You must work hard.”
“You hardly worked today.”
[moans] Oh... and the people who say,
“Are you working hard or hardly working?
Ha ha ha!”
[sighs] Just... stop... [chuckles]
“Don’t sell yourself short” “I’ll be with you shortly.”
“What went wrong?”
“He was wrongly accused.”
“Children eat free.”
“Please speak freely.”
4. Idiomatic use
You know, if there’s something you can’t explain very well in English...
call it “idiomatic.”
It’s true, though, that many things can’t be explained very easily
unless you go into historical linguistics, semantics, and some heavy-duty
linguistic explanations.
They’re idiomatic in the sense that the meaning of an expression
comes from the whole, not necessarily from its parts.
Especially if you’re an English-language learner,
sometimes you just have to accept these expressions as they are...
and move on to better things.
For example, “Say it out loud.”
“I laughed out loud.”
Why not “loudly?”
It’s just a formula that you say as is.
You could also say it’s one of those bare adverbs that sometimes
take the -ly ending.
But even in formal English, people would resist saying “Say it out loudly” or
“I laughed out loudly.”
“You need to dig deep to solve the problem.”
You have the adverb “deeply” all right, but this is an idiomatic expression.
You “dig deep,” and that’s that,
but you would say “to wound someone deeply.”
You say, “go slow”... but “proceed slowly.”
“Open wide”... but “travel widely” and “distribute something widely.”
But you’d always say,
“I searched far and wide and couldn’t find anything.”
It’s an idiomatic expression.
Another way to explain these uses of bare adverbs is that
they are collocations.
A collocation is a combination of words that happens frequently in the language.
For example, you say “a fast car.”
You could say “a quick car,” but
the word “car” calls for “fast,” not “quick.”
But you take a “quick shower,” while taking a “fast shower” sounds odd.
So, you “come clean” about something, not “come cleanly,” but
you cut a piece of paper “cleanly.”
You “play fair...”
“Play fairly” isn’t wrong, but it sounds very odd.
But you do say you “treat someone fairly.”
Whether you call these uses of adverbs idiomatic expressions or collocations,
they’re just part of the language.
They can be a nightmare for English-language learners,
but all languages have expressions like these and we all communicate just fine.
... “just finely?”...
No, “just fine.”
[chuckles]
That’s also what makes language so interesting.
We don’t speak like machines, where everything follows a strict program.
Language is dynamic.
We use the language in creative ways.
The English language has a history.
It used to have a lot of bare adverbs, but people started analyzing the language
and changed some of the bare adverbs to their -ly forms
while they kept others as is.
This process of language change can make things get kind of messy,
but that’s why languages are awesome!
I hope to see you around as a member of the channel.
Thank you!
[♫]
Hi, Marc Franco here.
This is just a quick explanation about how the Snap Language YouTube channel
is integrated with our website.
Let’s say you’ve just finished watching a video
so you go to the descriptions...
look for a link called “RELATED MATERIALS.”
As you can see here, for this video you have a link for this lesson.
That is a lesson related to the video you’ve just watched.
It also has some suggestions for other related materials.
Let’s go to the materials for this lesson.
[click]
So, as you can see, you go to the same lesson you’ve just watched on YouTube,
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It has additional information usually,
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As you can see here, for this particular lesson, there is a link back to the video.
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Then you can choose between “ESL lessons” or “Enrichment” lessons,
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So, let’s say you go to “Enrichment.”
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Bye! :)