EnglishFIX - #1 Adjectives vs Adverbs

in #english7 years ago (edited)
Grammar - Fun and easy to understand - Increasing the quality of your posts


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A short introduction

One of the biggest challenges I face here on Steemit is that my English does not sound as perfect as that of a native speaker. On the other hand, the first time I read others posts, I start to notice their mistakes. On other platforms, imperfect grammar just puts me off instantly and I lose trust in the content I'm reading. Here, I acknowledge the fact that people from all over the world are speaking their minds using the level of language they've got, so I've decided for myself that I'm not going to stumble in that but be open towards every message, appreciate any effort and reward those I like by voting them.

This time I am here to help the ones who need improvement with their English and I'm going to post fun and easy to understand posts as often as I can. I will focus on different topics, such as the most common grammatical errors people make.

I know many of you don't like sticking to the rules so that's why I'll be trying to explain them in very practical ways using images, short videos, and gifs to make it fun.

#1 Adjectives vs Adverbs

We're going to take a look this time at the difference between ADJECTIVES and ADVERBS and the confusion that you might make when using them.

First of all:

ADJECTIVE
EXAMPLE
a word that describes a noun (person, thing, place, concept etc)
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The adjective natural describes the noun causes
ADVERB
EXAMPLE
a word that describes a verb
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the adverb naturally describes the verb comes
a word that describes an adjective
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the adverb naturally describes the adjective stupid
a word that describes another adverb
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the adverb really describes the adverb ridiculously
a word that describes a whole sentence
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the adverb hopefully describes the whole sentence

As you've already noticed, most adverbs end in -ly so in order to transform an adjective into an adverb the general rule for forming adverbs is to add the termination “-ly” to the adjective:
quick → quickly
honest → honestly

But:

  • For adjectives that end in “-y”, the “y” becomes an “i”. The termination becomes “-ily.”:
    easy → easily
    happy → happily
  • For adjectives which end in “-ic”, the termination changes to “-ically”:
    automatic → automatically
    tragic → tragically
  • For adjectives that end in “-le”, the “e” is dropped and the termination “-ly” is added:
    terrible → terribly
    incredible → incredibly

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Irregulars


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  • good is an adjective
  • well is an adverb
    For example we don't say: She sings good. but She sings well. (well is describing the singing). You can also say: She is good at singing (good is describing her ability to sing).
Adverbs that keep the same form as the adjectives
Adjectives that look like adverbs but they're not (not all of the words ending in -ly are adverbs)
fast
ugly
hard
manly
early
lonely
late
lovely
high
silly
low
friendly
right
holy
wrong
smelly
straight
chilly
long
heavenly
daily/weekly/yearly
costly

Exceptions

There are times when verbs are described by adjectives and not by adverbs.
Let's see some examples:


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It's the case where the verbs don't express action but a state of being. They are called LINKING VERBS.
Other examples of linking verbs: to be, to look, to seem, to smell, to sound, to feel, appear etc.
So we don't say: They seem nicely. or You look wonderfully!
but They seem nice. and You look wonderful!

I hope you found this post useful. It would be greatly appreciated if you could share it with people you think would find it helpful.

Let's each one of us do our best in bringing and promoting a high-quality content on this platform

I wish everyone a great weekend! :)

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Good job, Elis! Foarte folositor!

Thank you dear! Ma bucur 😘

Don't worry if your grammar is not perfect. Write your heart out freely and then do a grammar check. Then read it again out loud. If it sounds strange there is probably something wrong.

This post was well written and may be useful to the Steemit community.

Is your native language Romanian?

Thank you :) I’m a perfectionist and I need to know I’m correct haha. Your tips are really helpful, thank you! I’ll do that.

Thank you for saying that! 😊I’d really like to make myself useful here. I also appreciate your work and your contribution to the community!

Yes, Romanian.

Very good post! I think this could help a lot the steemit members!!

also, if you could have used the education tag, it would have been fantastic!

I’ll used it from now on 😊 thanks!

Thank you @missdeli 😊 I hope it will!

A helpful post, and I like the message: even if diction may be off, what you have to say may be worthwhile. I applaud the effort to write in a second language. I've studied both Spanish and German extensively, but haven't got the courage to try writing in those languages. In conversation I don't mind plunging in and doing my best. Writing, however--that's another frontier. My mistakes seem more permanent. I once read a biography of Joseph Conrad, born in Poland, fluent in French. Conrad chose to write in English, even though he was less fluent in that language. His friends would edit his work and explain to him how some of his usage was awkward. And yet, Conrad's books are English-language classics.

Thank you so much! That is really encouraging to read. You’re brave. German is such a difficult language to learn! Conrad’s story is very inspiring!