Theory

We need a bit of Dutch to explain this: an adverb is “een bijwoord”, and an adjective is een “bijvoeglijk naamwoord”. You will all know enough examples of the latter: red, difficult, extensive, pretty, beautiful, etc. But what is an adverb? You may remember the definition “an adverb goes with a verb” but why did your teachers tell you about that in the first place? And why is this so difficult for Dutch speakers when they speak English?

The reason for this is that in Dutch adjectives and adverbs often have the same form. Een mooi meisje is the same “mooi” as zij zingt mooi, although from a grammatical point of view the function in the sentence is different (but who thinks about that when they are speaking or writing it?). This is why Dutch speakers tend to say: she sings beautiful because they simply translate mooi to beautiful. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. You need to start thinking about the relationship between words.

Is there any good news? Sure: the rules are straight forward, with hardly any exceptions. And these rules apply to other languages too, so this will help if you start to learn another language.

Just a quick reminder: an adverb is usually formed by adding –ly to the adjective, but there are some exceptions: hard and hardly are not a team. Other examples are fast, late, long, early and soon. So, you need to say: We drove very fast (not fastly), but still we arrived late (not lately).

Adjectives:

1. With a noun:  I saw a beautiful girl
2. With “to be”: I am beautiful
3. With verbs of the senses: She looks beautiful – That sounds bad – smells wonderful –tastes horrible – feels soft.
4. With some other verbs, among which: to appear, to seem, to become

Adverbs:

1. With verbs: She sings beautifully
2. With adjectives: a really beautiful girl
3. With other adverbs: she sings exceptionally beautifully
4. With a sentence: Surprisingly, he was there on time

A hint for example 2 and 3: if you can use the word very instead of the words printed in bold, you should use an adverb.