How to use adjectives and adverbs

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Dave, I'm Rebecca, and I'm Birgit, and welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi everyone, welcome back to this episode. Today we are going to focus on another grammar topic. We're going to talk about adjectives and adverbs, something people do mix up. It is quite confusing, but we're going to do our best to make things a little bit easier. So I'm going to hand over to Birgit, our grammar lady, for some, a bit of an explanation, first of all, and then we're going to give you some examples. Birgit, over to you. Thank you very much, Rebecca. I think I never get rid of that title here, grammar lady or something. It's just Birgit, okay? You know you love it. Okay, here we go. Adjectives and adverbs, okay, that's something. So we are coming in with two terms already, maybe grammar terms, and that's annoying for some people. They are not very interested in what it's called, and it's not important in the end. But of course, the thing has got a name. And adjectives, of course, is something we describe what we can see. So something might be nice or how you do things. So she's a careful driver or how we do it. And that's the point where I should start talking about adverbs, because in German, we don't have this difference. It's the L-Y ending. That's a clue. I think that's easier to understand for people who want to speak good English. When do you have to add the L-Y ending? Carefully, nicely, funnily, whatever. Every adjective, you can basically add one, except it's an exception. So we are going to talk about that in a minute. But where's the difference? So we have either the choice to describe something as a Zustand, something is, and that's usually described with the verb to be. For example, Dave is a very nice guy. Thank you. Rebecca is very funny. Agreed. Thank you. Yeah. So whenever you use be, the trees are beautiful, the ones you can see outside from your window. Hopefully you can see some. Everything you describe as a start or something, what it is with the verb to be, should be an adjective. So far, so good, so easy. And now comes the difficulty for the English language, because when you now would say, for example, Dave looks at me nicely. Of course. Which he does now. I have to add the L-Y ending. So this is referring to the verb. What does he do? He looks. And in which way? So whenever you can basically replace that in a nice way or in a beautiful way, that's the adverbial form with the L-Y ending. And that's sometimes confusing. It takes exercise. It takes repetition to understand this. One of my favourite examples is because obviously we're looking for some activity adjectives. So she is a careful driver. Hopefully my daughter, she drives carefully. How does she do it? She does it carefully in a careful way. Yeah. Do you agree? Absolutely. We agree. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Because that refers to how do you agree in a way, in an absolute way? Yeah, exactly. But that would be easy if it stopped there. But it's a little more complicated. And Dave's going to talk about this. And yes. How are you feeling, Dave? Good? I'm feeling, testing me here. I'm feeling good right now. But a lot of people may say, I'm feeling well. Okay. And this is a confusing part because in fact, you can use both in this one context. But going back to something else where Birgit talked about this, to be, there are other verbs as well, where in actual fact, you don't use the adverb form. So the L-Y, you use the adjective form, the simple form. These verbs are the verbs like to be, like to seem, to feel, to look, to sound, and to taste. So like the senses. For example, you don't say this food tastes well, because you're describing the state, as Birgit said at the very beginning, you are describing the state of the thing. So you say it tastes good. Okay. So not saying you look beautifully, you say you look beautiful. Okay. So it's the way of being. Okay. So that's very important. This little exception, should I say, that when we use these verbs, we don't use the adverb at the end. Instead, we use an adjective form. So the normal form. But when we're using well and good with the feel, if I say I feel well, it usually means that I feel healthy. So maybe if I was ill for a while, oh, how are you feeling Dave? I feel well, in the sense of I feel healthy again after I was ill. But if you say I feel good, it's usually got some kind of emotional connection. So maybe I feel good after my exam because I thought I did well in the exam. I performed well. Okay. So these are just different ways. There are exceptions with those special verbs I mentioned before. Sorry, Dave. Yeah, wonderfully explained. Thank you. Now we are sort of stressing on it. But I think we need to introduce you because that's for people sometimes also confusing. I know. Why? Well, so good has got an irregular adverb, which is again confusing. So it's not goodly, of course. So well refers to what nicely is to nice, well and good. That's confusing sometimes. So just one. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are other ones as well. So there are some with the L Y that are actually not kind of confusing. So, for example, late and lately, you would say she arrived late. You wouldn't say she arrived lately, even though arrive is a verb. And normally you would think, all right, I'll put the adverb because lately has a different meaning. So lately means recently or I haven't seen her lately. Yeah. Recently. But she arrived late or the bus arrived late, not lately in a late way, but late. And the other one is hard and hardly. So you would say she works hard. Yeah. But she works a lot. And if you say she hardly works, if she doesn't work at all, almost nothing at all. Calm, hardly is calm. So that's kind of confusing. He works hard. It's like, oh, he doesn't do much then. That's very confusing. So there are a couple that, yeah, just have a different meaning. And the adjective that end in L Y, of course, you can't change then. Early also, I think, or is that an adjective? She came early. Came early. Ah, right. I see what you mean. Yeah. I just saw that somewhere because you don't think about that, especially not as a native. So there are words that already have the L Y. Yeah. OK. I have a nice list of what they're sentence adverbials. Sounds very complicated. Dave's going like, what's that? Sounds painful. Basically, that's one of them. You see, basically, these nice words that you can often put at the beginning of a sentence, often followed by a comma, and it expresses a kind of feeling or an opinion about the sentence. These are really nice. I remember learning these in German, the sort of equivalence, and they're kind of helpful. I'm going to start with one that everybody probably knows. Unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately, I cannot come to the event this evening. Yeah. We all know this. Unfortunately, which is an adverbial. And of course, then there's the positive. Fortunately, fortunately, I arrived home before the rain started. Yeah. So these are quite nice, often followed by a comma, often put at the beginning of a sentence. I've got a few more. You can say honestly, we all know that one, I think, to be honest. Honestly, I'm not sure. Seriously, seriously, we need to sort this out. Seriously. Hopefully, hopefully, the sun will come out tomorrow. Luckily, I had an umbrella with me. Sadly, we couldn't find a solution to the problem. And then what else have I got? Oh, there's some that use the word enough, which is kind of a bit confusing. Funnily enough, Cormier-Schweizer. Yeah, we often use the word enough on top of it. So funnily enough, Cormier, I haven't seen him for ages. And then I just met him in the supermarket. Funnily enough, I met him just yesterday. And also you can use strangely enough. So again, it's just kind of like Cormier-Schweizer, I would say. Strangely enough, I did meet him, even though I haven't seen him for a long time. So they go with enough for some reason. I don't know why. Again, followed by a comma. And they're just a nice kind of bring you into the sentence. The classic British one that we love, of course, is actually. We all like to use actually, which again is this classic false friend in German. Birgit, do you hear this a lot? Yeah, but yeah, we're trying to work it off of the way. Apparently, get rid of it. Get rid of it. Yeah. So the currently, of course, well, currently, but actually, yeah. So actually, oh, you're French. No, actually, I'm Belgian. So there's another one with the L-Y. And why would people write? Why do we see an email? For example, I hope this email finds you well, Dave, coming back to that. Well, then as a native, can you explain that? It's following the rule, isn't it? It finds you. It is. It is. It is. I think sometimes it just seems a little bit strange. But yeah, it's following the rule because of the word find, which is a verb, and it finds you well. So when you get this mail, you feel good. Healthy. Or in this case, if you're healthy, you feel well, right? But it is actually very confusing. It is describing the way it finds you. So it is the verb thing. But you can also say, I hope you're well. I often write, I hope you're well. I hope you're good. Yeah, exactly. Because, yeah, which is confusing, but actually you would say, meaning I hope you're gesund, like you're healthy. Yeah, you're healthy. That's right. Yeah. Not that you're like feeling super duper today, but just you're healthy. Yeah. I'm feeling well. You're normal. What about Americans? Do they follow this rule the same? Or would you say there's again a difference? I don't want to open up a big... Yeah, can of worms. Can of worms. Sorry. I think there are differences. Differences. So the tip for the listeners and for the learners, don't get confused by this, but that's the actual rule when you learn it and people learn it or pupils learn it in school this way. Yeah. So it's the start with how is something and as well, the senses, taste, feel, smells, and then it's how you do something. Yeah. Okay. Referring to the... Okay. The Golden Nugget. Today's Golden Nugget is referring to this issue, to this topic, because yet again, there's another aspect which people need to be told or you need to be aware of when you move up on your level because adverbs also quantify adjectives. Okay. What does that mean? They don't only refer to verbs, how you do something, but to other adjectives. So I give you some examples. This is exceptionally nice of you. Okay. So now learner starting to think, okay, she's saying is okay, but I talk about the nice and then I quantify even the nice. It's exceptionally nice of you. How would I say that in German? Ganz besonders. So there's nothing like in our language. So we can't compare that really. So this exam, you could say that was extremely difficult. And of course, very often learners when you're in the country, you don't learn it by the rules, sort of look at it. How would you say, you just copy. That's a parroting part. One of our Golden Nugget, one of the first ones in our booklet. Yes. So you really repeat. So you would not hear people say that was extreme difficult. No, never, ever. I don't, I don't think I've ever heard that. So surprisingly easy. Another one. Yeah. But again, we're using an adjective to describe another adjective. So one is going to be adverbial form. I hope that makes sense. If not, well, you can read about this in one of my books, which is the red book. If you see it online, it's the second part of the exercise books. Yeah. That's your adjectives in. Okay. Okay. Are we all clear now? Hopefully we are all clear on what that means. We had a workshop a couple of weeks ago, which was exceptionally nice to take your phrase. It was exceptionally nice and extremely good fun. And it went well. It went well and it went so well. We have decided what Dave. We're going to do it again. Good answer. Was that the right answer? That was the right answer. You answered correctly. Oh yes. It was a correct answer. Correct answer. Exactly. Yes. We are going to do it again. We enjoyed it so much. We had a workshop. We switched to an online format and we spent four, about four and a half hours altogether. A small group, which was surprisingly nice, worked really well. And we have decided to do the same thing again in 2026. Do we have a date? January 23rd, I think. Yes. Oh God. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And I think I want to add that everybody felt good in the workshop. So we got the feedback. So all the participants, and of course we felt good. It went well. Yes. So this is probably going to be something in the long run. We're going to repeat. Absolutely. Again and again. Again and again. And as you know, we are three English experts. So you get three for the price of one, let's say. You get your grammar refresh and review with Birgit. You get your communication skills with Dave and you get your mindset and your motivation with me. So people seem to really appreciate the combination, the mix. Really, it went very well. So if you're interested, head over to our special website, threeenglishexpertsworkshop.com. And you can find all the details there about January and generally about our upcoming workshops in 2025, 2026. Sorry, wrong year. Because we will be doing this again, definitely. And yeah. Or you can drop us a line here, threeenglishexperts.com, if you have any questions. So looking forward to that. Extremely interesting. Extremely interesting. And in our next episode, we'd like to switch from grammar to idioms, which are these wonderful little phrases that we have in different languages that, yeah, just are very special and funny. So listen in, tune in to our idioms session in the next episode. Bye for now. Bye bye. Bye for now. Bye bye. Thank you so much for pressing late today. If you enjoy our podcast, please share with your friends, your family or your co-workers. Or you can also support us by giving us a thumbs up or a star rating or a review on whatever podcast platform you are using to listen to us. 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