In Dutch you don’t hear the difference between an adverb and an adjective. In French it does matter. But that’s no reason to get gray hairs.
An adjective is an adjectif, an adverb is an adverbe. The difference is grammatical, and once you figure that out, you can work with it in French as well.
Adjectif
An adjective (adjectif) describes a noun.
For example: That is a big dog. Here ‘big’ is the adjective that says something about the noun ‘dog’. You can recognize a noun because in English you can place “the” or “a/an” before it (or in French le/la/l’ or un/une).
In French, that sentence becomes: Il est un grand chien.
More examples:
Une jolie fille (a beautiful girl)
Le gift moche (an ugly gift)
La fleur petite (the little flower)
An adjective changes along with the noun in French:
Un joli garcon. Lesson gifts moches. Les fleurs petites.
Adverbe
An adverb (adverbe) describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
For example: You have worked well. Here ‘good’ is the adverb, which says something about the verb ‘worked’. You can often find the adverb by asking a “how” question: How did you work? – Well.
In French: Tu as bien travaillé.
If there is one verb in a sentence, the adverb is placed after it.
Elle travaille bien. (She works well)
Elle m’aide rapidement. (She helps me quickly)
Position in the sentence
With multiple verbs, the placement of the adverb depends on the number of syllables. Does the adverb have 1 or 2 syllables? Then you put the adverb between the auxiliary verb and the past participle:
Elle m’a bien aidé. (she helped me well)
Does the adverb have three or more syllables? Then you put the adverb after the past participle:
Elle m’a aide rapidement . (she helped me quickly)
If the adverb describes an adjective or another adverb, the adverb is placed before it:
Il est vraiment gentil. (he is very kind)
Ils jouent très bien. (they play very well)
Adverb forms
The adverb is formed as follows:
Take the feminine singular form of an adjective.
Add -ment to it.
Therefore:
ouvert > ouvertement
vif > vivement
complet > completement
heureux > heureusement
French wouldn’t be French if there weren’t exceptions to the rule.
If the adjective ends in a vowel, the -e added to the feminine form is dropped. So: ask> request.
Some forms are completely irregular, for example:
bon > bien
gentil > gentiment
mauvais > mal
meilleur > mieux
