In English, we add -ly at the end of an adjective to form an adverb: quick, quickly, general, generally, and so on. It’s basically the same in Spanish. In our case, the ending is -mente: rápida, rápidamente, general, generalmente. But you need to remember a couple of things:
-If the adjective has only one ending, we directly attach -mente: normal, normalmente, suave, suavemente.
-If the adjective has two endings (feminine and masculine), we take the feminine to form the adverb: rápido, rápida: rápidamente, lento, lenta: lentamente.
-Interestingly, “la mente” is “the mind” in Spanish. So, when we say that someone does something “lentamente” (slowly), it means “with a slow mind”, or “tristemente” (sadly), “with a sad mind”.
-When we have two adverbs ending in -mente one after the other, we only put the ending in the second one to avoid repeating the same sound, but if the adverb had an “a” (like “rápidamente” or “lentamente”, explained above), they retain the “a”. It’s easy to see this in an example: instead of saying “él habla lentamente y tranquilamente” (which sounds very repetitive), we say “él habla lenta y tranquilamente”. Do you see? “Lenta” and not “lento”, because it is the adverb “lentamente” without its ending. It doesn’t matter that the subject of the sentence is a man! We are a little complicated, I know.
-With some very frequent adverbs, we don’t put the ending simply to speak faster:
“Lo hice muy rápido”. More common than “lo hice muy rápidamente”.
“Escribe bastante lento”. More common than “escribe bastante lentamente”.
“Solo tengo dos horas”. More common than “solamente tengo dos horas”.
“Terminé justo antes de la hora de comer”. More common than “terminé justamente antes de la hora de comer”.
In these cases, we put an “o” at the end, which is neutral (not masculine).
Comúnmente, los blogs son un poco más largos, pero este es extremadamente corto. Obviamente, ahora quiero que practiquen mucho con estas formas. Háganlo lenta y cuidadosamente, no muy rápido. Recuerden que los idiomas se estudian pacientemente.
Commonly, the blogs are a little longer, but this one is extremely brief. Obviously, now I want you to practise a lot with these forms. Do it slowly and carefully, not very quickly. Remember that languages must be studied patiently.
