French Adverbs

In this video tutorial lesson I will provide a basic overview of French adverbs. First of all, what is an adverb? An adverb is a word in grammar which qualifies the action of the verb and specifies how the action is performed. In the English language examples of adverbs would be slowly, quickly and fortunately. And the phrase, “I eat slowly”, slowly is the adverb as it follows the verb each and specifies how the eating is done.

As you can see in English to make an adverb we add the letters “ly” to the end of an adjective. In French we add the letters “ent” to the end of an adjective in the same manner.

For example, in French to say slowly we say “lentement“. We take the additive, “lent“, which means slow and add an “ent” to the end of it to get lentement.

To use this word and a sample sentence in French we could say “Il mange lentement“, which means he eats slowly.

dernièrement lately immédiatement immediately premièrement first
énormément enormously naturellement naturally profondément profoundly
franchement frankly précédemment previously rapidement rapidly
gentiment kindly précisément precisely rarement rarely
sérieusement seriously
Sample Sentences:

In the lesson I also provide some sample sentences which use adverbs. The sentences are as follows along with their English translations. I’ve put the adverbs in italics.

  • Les enfants vont rarement à la plage./The children go rarely to the beach.
  • Il vient immédiatement./He comes immediately.
  • Tu parles rapidement./You speak rapidly.
  • Les arbres poussent naturellement./The trees grow naturally.
  • Il est sérieusement en retard./He is seriously late.

As you can see these really are not too difficult at all. Given that all you have to do is add an ENT to the end of the agitated put it after the main verb in the sentence creating more practice sentences should be easy. Give it a try and let me know if you have any questions!

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