A2 · The adjectives
Adverbs in -ment
-ment hangs on the feminine, not on the plain form.
At a glance
- Remember
- Feminine first, then -ment — and «good» gives «well» here too.
- Form
- lent → lentementslowly
- Signal words
- -ment
- lentement
- vraiment
- évidemment
- bien
- Trap
- Wrong:Elle chante bonnement.Right:Elle chante bien.
Your turn
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The form
From the base form to the new form
Each row first says what the form expresses, then shows it in French: the base form before the arrow, the result after it.
| slowly | lent → lentement |
| gently | doux → doucement |
| really | vrai → vraiment |
| obviously | évident → évidemment |
| fluently | courant → couramment |
| well | bon → bien |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
-ment attaches to the feminine form.
Elle parle très lentement.She speaks very slowly.
After a vowel the e drops out.
C’est vraiment dommage.That really is a pity.
-ent becomes -emment, -ant becomes -amment.
Il parle couramment l’espagnol.He speaks Spanish fluently.
The adverb of bon is bien.
Elle chante bien.She sings well.
Example sentences
Il a répondu immédiatement à mon message.He answered my message immediately.
Nous arriverons probablement en retard.We shall probably arrive late.
Parle doucement, les enfants dorment.Speak quietly, the children are asleep.
J’ai mal dormi cette nuit.I slept badly last night.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
The adverb of bon is bien, not bonnement, and the adverb of mauvais is mal. English speakers have the instinct already — nobody says «she sings goodly» — but the instinct does not travel by itself, because the French word looks like an ordinary adjective. Applying the rule mechanically does build bonnement, which exists and means «plainly».
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
An adverb is built from the *feminine* form of the adjective plus -ment: lent → lente → lentement, doux → douce → doucement. English «-ly» hangs straight onto the plain adjective — «slow, slowly» — so the extra step in the middle is the whole of the difference, and it is the step that gets skipped.
If the adjective already ends in a vowel, -ment attaches directly: vrai → vraiment, poli → poliment. The feminine is not needed there because it would not be heard.
Adjectives in -ent and -ant give -emment and -amment, and the two are pronounced identically: évident → évidemment, courant → couramment. Hearing the word will not tell you how to spell it.
A few common adverbs are not built this way at all: bien, mal, vite, souvent, toujours, déjà. English has exactly the same short list of irregulars, starting with the same word: «good» gives «well», not «goodly», and bon gives bien, not bonnement.
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