French Notes

Round 1 – Placement of adverbs

Adverbs always follow the verbs that they modify.  For composed tenses (like passé composé), the adverb follows the past participle.

Elle a couru lentement.

Ce monsieur a exprimé ouvertement ses sentiments.

* the exception to this rule is the following list of adverbs.  In the composed tenses (passé composé), they follow the auxiliary verb.

bien, déjà, tant, trop, assez, peu, encore, vite, vraiment, beaucoup, toujours, tellement, bientôt, souvent, mal, autant, presque, enfin, à peine

Sophie est déjà sortie.

J’ai trop parlé.

Round 2 – Formation of Adverbs

To change adjectives to adverbs

a.   (for the majority of adjectives)  1. take the feminine form of the adjective (doux becomes douce, lent becomes lente, franc becomes franche)              2.  add ment   – doucement, lentement, heureusement, franchement

b. for an adjective where the masculine form ends in i, é, or u, don’t change to feminine, but just add the ment – poli becomes poliment, vrai becomes vraiment, absolu becomes absolument, etc.

c. if an adjective ends in ‘ant’ or ‘ent’, one changes the ending to ‘amment’ or ’emment’.

puissant becomes puissamment

courant becomes couramment

évident becomes évidemment

d.  and as always there are the irrregular adverbs ….