French · Chapter 13 · Lesson 15 · Grammar primer
Adverbs of manner in -ment
Building adverbs from the feminine adjective (lente -> lentement), the -amment / -emment pairs, and the suppletive irregulars bien, mal and vite.
The short version
Build the adverb off the feminine
The -ment adverb hangs off the feminine adjective, not the masculine: lent gives lente gives lentement, doux gives douce gives doucement. The exception is a masculine that already ends in a vowel, which takes -ment straight: vrai gives vraiment, never vraiement.
Parle plus doucement, s'il te plaît.
-amment and -emment sound identical
Constamment and évidemment rhyme exactly; the a and the e make no difference to the ear. So you cannot spell these by sound, you spell them from the adjective: -ant gives -amment (courant, couramment) and -ent gives -emment (évident, évidemment).
Évidemment, elle avait raison.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
Read the full article · 5 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
24-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
French · Free printables
Worksheets for this lesson
Worksheets with answer keys built in. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekLesson 15 of 23 in this chapter