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Tim先生の One-Point Lesson #15

2010-06-24 14:43:19 | Weblog
Changing adjectives to adverbs

Hello everyone!

Last week we learned about words which can be changed into different word classes. For example, words which can be changed from a noun to an adjective, verb, or adverb. Sometimes the word stays the same, but sometimes the word changes its spelling and pronunciation, particularly at the end of the word.

Today, I will talk about some of the general rules about exactly how to make that change. In particular, I will show some of the rules for changing adjectives into adverbs.

In most cases, the change is very simple. You just add '-ly' to the end of the word, and it becomes an adverb. Here are a few examples:

Bad (He is a bad singer) -> Badly (He sings badly)
Quiet (She is a quiet speaker) -> Quietly (She speaks quietly)

For certain kinds of word endings, the ending has to be different. There are five general rules for this change:

-le becomes -ly Gentle -> Gently
-ic becomes -ically Automatic -> Automatically
-y becomes -ily Easy -> Easily
-ll becomes -lly Full -> Fully
-ue becomes -uly True -> Truly

Be careful: Adjectives that ALREADY end in -ly usually can't be made into adverbs. For example, you can't take 'friendly' (a friendly person) and make an adverb 'friendlily'. There is no such word as friendlily, and there is no adverb form of the word friendly.

Remember: All rules about changing words and spellings have many exceptions. They are general guidelines that work about 90% of the time. Don't be surprised if you sometimes see a word that doesn't obey these rules. For example, the adjective 'public' as in 'a public building' ends in -ic, but the adverb form is usually 'publicly' instead of 'publically'. Follow the rules whenever you can, but be careful about tricky exceptions!

I will be back in Australia next week, but the lessons will be back on the 8th of July.
See you then!
-Tim

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