It’s Professor Dave, let’s look at adverbs.
We know a lot about verbs, so what’s an adverb?
Adverbs are small words that can be found near a verb.
These modify the action described by the verb in a variety of ways, just like the way that
adjectives modify nouns.
Now that we’re clear on what adverbs are, let’s talk about the different types of adverbs.
There is one bit of good news, adverbs are invariable, which means they don’t change
their form no matter who the subject may be.
That’s a rare treat in Italian.
First lets talk about avverbi di tempo.
These words are used when asking the question “when”, and they add information about
the moment when a certain action is taking place.
Here are the most common ones.
Next let’s look at avverbi di luogo.
When answering the question “where”, these add information about where the action is
taking place.
Here are a few now.
Next let’s learn avverbi di quantità.
They are used when asking “how much”.
We already learned the words poco, molto, and troppo, in the adjectives lesson.
When these words are used as adjectives, it’s because they are modifying nouns, and they
must agree with their nouns in gender and number.
But these words can also be used adverbially, in which case they will modify a verb or an adjective.
In this context, they will remain unchanged.
Next let’s check out avverbi di affermazione, negazione, e dubbio.
These describe affirmative or negative reply, or even doubt.
For affermazione, we can use:
These ones give extra emphasis to our clause.
We will see these again when we learn about double negatives.
And lastly, we can learn avverbi di modo o maniera.
This group is very important, and it helps to answer the question “how”, or “in
which way”.
These appear in different forms, but many correspond to English adverbs ending in LY
that can be formed from adjectives.
The Italian suffix that is equivalent to LY will be MENTE, and it will be invariable,
while the stem might vary according to the type of adjective you are using.
The first type uses adjectives ending in E. Here, we just add the suffix.
The second type uses adjectives ending in LE or RE.
With these, we drop the last letter of the stem.
And the third type uses adjectives ending in O. Here, the O becomes an A before we add
the suffix.
Here are a few more for good measure.
So as you can see, words can become very long when we start adding suffixes like these.
In fact, the longest recognized word in Italian is the adverb precipitevolissimevolmente,
an eleven-syllable word that means “in a hasty way”.
But not all the quality adverbs end in –mente.
Here are some others.
Before we finish, let’s look at a few common adverbial phrases that will help you speak
like a true Italian.
And that’s all we need to know about adverbs, so let’s check comprehension.