Adverbs of Manner

This lesson is all about adverbs of manner.

Adverbs of manner answer the question how so they tell us how something happened and they can modify verbs adjectives or in clauses of a sentence and they usually form by adding L Y to adjectives.

Of course there are exceptions to this.

It is after all English please do not confuse adverbs of manner with adverbs of degree the placement of adverbs of manner can change the meaning of the sentence and we’ll look at examples for all of these.

Now

adverbs of manner are usually formed by adding the letters L the Y to the equivalent adjectives.

Example here’s a quick swimmer quick being the adjective describing the swimmer or he swims quickly she paints beautiful pictures she paints beautifully or the efficient secretary organized the event the secretary organized the event efficiently Of course we have exceptions to this this is after all English so here we have one with two L’s at the end of the word and if we added l y we’d get three L’s together which we really never have.

So we just add a Y to double L.

So Sarah is shrill when she sings or she sings shrilly if we have I see at the end we add an a l l y.

I think this just makes it easier to say they are enthusiastic musicians when they play enthusiastically.

Now here we have an a situation where we have l e following a consonant and in this particular case we don’t add an L Y gently we just replace the e with a Y.

So the gentle medic lifted the injured driver or he lifted the injured driver gently and if he l e follows a vowel as in this case this actually takes the standard rule just at l y.

So the agile girl jumped over the wall she jumped agile Lee over the wall an exception to this is whole becomes wholly as we can see here if you have a Y following a consonant we change the Y to I l y when we form the adverb.

So the problem was easy to solve.

She solved the problem easily.

The exception to this are shy and sly which form shyly and slightly respectively in the adverb form however if the y follows a vowel then that follows the standard at L Y rule so the coy woman answered the question she answered coyly and the one exception to this is gay.

We write gaily with an eye

and if you e we don’t add an L Y we remove the E from the adverb form so the witness spoke true words.

The witness answered truly so you e goes to you l y as an adverb and some adverbs of course don’t end an l y at all.

And here’s a few here where the adjective adverb are the same so fast hard little much and straight the same word an adjective an adverb form so you just have to really make sure you’re clear which is which.

And another exception is the adjective good becomes the adverb well so you would say he is good at football but he plays football well.

And another thing to watch out for is hard and hardly.

They almost mean the opposite.

So hard it means something is difficult or you’ll say you’re working hard on it but you’re not working hardly on it.

So be very careful with that one.

please do not confuse adverbs of manner with adverbs of degree and for more information on adverbs of degree.

Please check out the lesson on adverbs of degree in this block the police treated him fairly he speaks Dutch fairly fluently so an adverb of manner.

Answering the question how are how the police treated him.

They treated him fairly or we’re saying he speaks Dutch fairly fluently.

That’s an adverb of degree so is explain how well he speaks Dutch.

And one more example poorly explained the problem terribly well I’m terribly sorry.

So the first one is terribly as an adverb a manner that explains how Paul explained the problem in this case not very well.

Well I’m terribly sorry.

Terribly here’s an adverb of degree meaning like I’m really very very sorry and the placement of adverbs of manner can actually change the meaning of the whole sentence and we’ll look at some examples of this.

She quickly agreed to go shopping so her agreement was quick.

Someone asked her to go shopping and very quickly she said of course or she agreed to go shopping.

Quickly the agreement wasn’t necessarily fast but the shopping was quick perhaps this example was a little bit clearer.

He asked me quietly to leave the house so he didn’t shout.

He just asked quietly can you leave the house.

This example.

He asked me to leave the house quietly quietly refers to how I leave the house not how he asked me.