How to form adverbs - Easy Learning Grammar Italian

1  The basics

• In English you can make an adverb from the adjective slow by adding –ly. You can do a similar kind of thing in Italian.
• Here are some guidelines:

• if the adjective ends in –o in the masculine, take the feminine form, ending in –a, and add –mente

• if the adjective ends in –e for both masculine and feminine, just add –mente

• if the adjective ends in –le, or –re, you drop the final e before adding –mente

2  Irregular adverbs

• In Italian there are two kinds of adverbs which do not behave in the way just described. They are:

• adverbs which are completely different from the adjective
• adverbs which are exactly the same as the masculine adjective

• The adverb related to buono (meaning good) is bene (meaning well). The adverb related to cattivo (meaning bad) is male (meaning badly).

• Words such as fast and hard can be both adjectives and adverbs:

• a fast car
• You’re driving too fast.
• a hard question
• He works very hard.

• The same kind of thing happens in Italian: some adverbs are the same as the masculine adjective. The following are the most common ones:

• chiaro (adjective: clear; adverb: clearly)

• giusto (adjective: right, correct; adverb: correctly, right)

• vicino (adjective: near, close; adverb: nearby, near here)

• diritto (adjective: straight; adverb: straight on)

• certo (adjective: sure, certain; adverb: of course)

• solo (adjective: alone, lonely; adverb: only)

• forte (adjective: strong, hard; adverb: fast, hard)

• molto (adjective: a lot of; adverb: a lot, very, very much)

• poco (adjective: little, not very much; adverb not very much, not very)

• Note that although these adverbs look like adjectives, they NEVER change their form.