Adverbs

Adverbs add meaning to a verb and describe actions. They usually tell you where, when or how something happened or how it is done. Examples in English are slowly, precisely, immediately, happily – for example She quickly runs home or He eats slowly. Notice the 'ly' at the end. In French most adverbs end in 'ment' which is added on to the masculine if that ends in a vowel, otherwise is added on to the feminine form of the adjective for example:

• général/générale (free) généralement (generally)
• lent (slow) lentement (slowly)
• heureux/heureuse (happy) heureusement (happily)
• doux/douce (sweet/gentle) doucement (sweetly/gently)
• joli/jolie (pretty) joliment (prettily)
• libre (free) librement (freely)

In most cases where the masculine adjective ends in 'ent' or 'ant' we instead remove the 'nt' and add 'mment', for example:

• constant (constant) constamment (constantly)
• évident (evident) évidemment (evidently)
• récent (free) récemment (freely)

As always there are some exceptions that don't follow either rule, for example (look out for where the 'e' changes to 'é' and for 'mal' and 'vite'):

• bref (brief) brièvement (briefly)
• gentil (nice) gentiment (nicely)
• mal (bad) mal (badly)
• précis/précise (precise) précisément (precisely)
• profond/profonde (deep) profondément (deeply)
• vite (true/quick) vite (quickly)
• vrai (true/right) vraiment (truly/rightly)

Notice that in the first English example above quickly is before the verb, and in the second example slowly is after the verb. In French, the advert is after the verb 99% of the time, so the above examples in French would be:

• elle court vite à la maison
• il mange lentement

If an advert modifies a negative verb, then it goes after the pas/que, etc. For example il ne mange pas lentement.

In the perfect (compound past) tense the advert goes after the auxiliary (avoir/être) and before the past participle, except if it is a long one (!), so for the above examples:

• She quickly ran home elle a vite couru à la maison
• He ate quickly il a vite mangé or il a mangé rapidement
• He ate slowly il a mangé lentement

There are also adverbs of time, frequency and place which are also usually come after the verb, for example elle arrive toujours en retard (she always arrives late), il mange souvent des beignets (he often eats donuts) and je suis dehors (I am outside). The table below shows the common adverbs of time, frequency and place.

	French	English
Frequency	jamais	never
	rarement	rarely
	quelquefois	sometimes
	parfois	sometimes
	souvent	often
	toujours	always
	d’habitude	usually
	encore	again
	enfin	finally
Present	aussitôt	immediately
	tôt	early
	maintenant	now
	d'abord	first
	actuellement	currently
	tard	late
Past	hier	yesterday
	avant-hier	the day before yesterday
	plus tôt	earlier
Future	bientôt	soon
	ensuite	next
	aujourd’hui	today
	demain	tomorrow
	tout à l'heure	later
	après-demain	the day after tomorrow
Place	là-bas	over there
	là	there
	ici	here
	près	near
	loin	far
	loin d'ici	far away
	quelque part	somewhere
	dehors	outside
	dedans	inside
	avant	before
	dessus	above
	dessous	below
	partout	everywhere
	devant	in front
	derrière	behind

Some adverbs can modify or intensify other adverbs. For example in the sentence Il est vite 'est' is the verb and 'vite' is the adverb. très is an adverb modifier e.g. Il est très vite. Adverb modifiers include all the adverbs of frequency, time and place and:

• peu (a bit / not very)
• assez (quite)
• presque (almost)
• beaucoup (a lot / too much)
• très (very)
• tellement (so)
• vraiment (really)
• trop (too)