I'm sure you know that in English most adverbs can be formed by placing
-LY after the adjective. quick/quickly, stupid/stupidly, angry/angrily. "The teacher looked at me angrily"
But did you know that there are a number of words in English that end in -LY that are
not adverbs but adjectives. Today we're going to look at some of these -LY adjectives. We'll
see how to make them into adverbs and we'll look at some adverbs which have both an -LY
and not -LY form with different meanings. It's confusing and we don't want you to be confused
so stay tuned.
Hello and welcome to LetThemTalk the channel that goes deeper into everything about the
English language.
And what I wanted to talk to you about today are -LY adjectives. So most of the time you
form adverbs with -LY. But there are a number of adjectives ending in -LY which, cannot
but used as adverbs
For example friendly, lovely, lonely, ugly, deadly, cowardly,
silly. These are all adjectives.
So the question is what happens when you want to make an -LY adjective into an adverb.
Take friendly for example. Let's make a sentence with it.
"When he speaks to me he is friendly." - that's ok friendly is an adjective.
Now let's try make an adverb out of FRIENDLY
"He spoke to me friendly". Is that correct?"......No it can't be because as we said we need an
adverb here and as we know FRIENDLY is an adjective
Logicically we can put an - LY and the "he spoke to me friendlily. "
We're getting closer grammatically but it doesn't sound very nice. "friendlily".
How about this "He spoke to me in a friendly way"
Ahhh that sounds better. doesn't it? "he spoke to me in a friendly way" So for most -LY adjectives
we get around it by saying "in a ---- way". or "in a ..... manner".
Let's look at some example "She smiled to me in such a lovely way"
"He expressed his opinions strongly but in a kindly way."
You're behaving foolishly and in cowardly manner."
"Don't speak to me in such a silly manner".ok so "sillily" would not be correct - sound
ridiculous doesn't it?
And now for the confusing part.
And there are 3 adverbs which have an -LY an and a non -LY form but, and it's a big
BUT the meanings are completely different. These adverbs are
Hard - hardly near - nearly
late - lately.
Let's look at these one at a time.
HARD can be used as an adverb for example "I worked hard"
"He throw the ball hard" "She studied hard for the exams"
So as an adverb means with a lot of effort.
But there is another adverb HARDLY which has a completely different meaning
HARDLY means almost nothing, almost not at all. HERE hardly is an adverb of degree or
frequency and so it's placed before the verb. So "I hardly worked" means "I did almost nothing"
almost the opposite of "I worked hard" I hardly speak any Greek, just a few words
and expressions that I learnt on my holiday to Crete. Kalispera. that's Greek isn't it.
- but I hardly speak any Greek. So it means almost nothing. OK be careful of the difference
Let's look at NEAR and NEARLY Near refers to proximity
"I live near the station" "My office is near the metro. "
NEARLY means almost. "I nearly won the lottery. "
"I nearly forgot the appointment "- which means "I almost forgot the appointment"
so they are very close synonyms
Late - (as I'm sure you know) means "not on time"
"I arrived late"," the train left late" but lately is a synonym of recently
"I've not been feeling well lately."
"I've done a lot of work on this project lately. "
Well there you are, we're nearly finished. Thank you for watching you've behaved in such
a lovely way and and I hardly need to tell you that more English language videos are
coming soon.