Intro to adverbs | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello grammarians! Today we are going to talk skillfully and patiently about adverbs and what it is that adverbs do. In order to do that, I think it might be useful to talk about what adjectives do first.

So, adjectives can modify stuff. I should have been clearer in the last video and said that the stuff they modify is nouns, but I didn't want to introduce too many rules and strictures. What adjectives modify is nouns and only nouns. Adverbs modify everything else.

So, adverbs modify everything that's not a noun. The way we usually see this applied is with verbs, and it's right there in the name: to add verbs. This comes from the Latin meaning "on" or "to" verbs, action words. Adverbs are words that you slap on to verbs.

Basically, what I imagined when I think of adverbs is, I kind of see like a sticker. Here's this sticker: we've got "slowly." So we can take this thing and turn it into a sticker. Boop! Move it around. Do we like it?

We can write a sentence like "Grayson ran, Boop, slowly." You know, and "slowly" here refers back to "ran." It's how he ran, not really describing Grayson. It's modifying or describing the action of running. "Perle arranged the furniture slowly." Boop! Little sticker we just put on there.

But a word is also considered an adverb if it modifies adjectives. So, let's say adverbs modify verbs and adjectives. We could say something like, "Vanessa was very hungry," right? Because "hungry" is an adjective and "very" is doing this thing where it's modifying "hungry."

It's not "Vanessa wasn't very"; you can't be "very." "Very" is not an adjective, but it is a modifier, and the word that it's modifying is "hungry." How hungry was Vanessa? Vanessa was very hungry. Vanessa could also be slightly hungry.

This leads me to one of the most important things about adverbs, which is that generally they tend to have "ly" on them. So generally, the way to make an adverb is to just take an adjective and add "ly" to it.

You take the word "slow," ya del "ly," you get the adverb "slowly." You take the word "nice," ya del "ly," you get the adverb "nicely." You take the adjective "cheerful," and now "ly," you get the adverb "cheerfully."

So adverbs modify everything that isn't a noun, and that means that they modify verbs and adjectives. The way you make an adverb most of the time is by just taking an adjective and tacking on "ly" to the end of it. It's like a sticker that you put on top of a verb or an adjective.

That's what adverbs are, and that's what they do. And what you can do is learn anything! Damn it!