Portuguese Adverbs: How -mente Works, and When to Skip It

An adverb tells you how, when, where or how much. English builds most of its manner adverbs by adding -ly to an adjective, and Portuguese does almost exactly the same thing with -mente: rápido gives rapidamente, feliz gives felizmente, fácil gives facilmente. One rule, and a large slice of the adjectives you already know turn into adverbs you did not have to learn separately.

There are two catches, and neither is hard. The adjective has to be feminine before -mente goes on, and any written accent disappears in the process. Beyond that, the adverbs that matter most in Portuguese are not -mente words at all, and in Brazilian speech the -mente form is often skipped entirely.

The rule: feminine adjective plus -mente

Take the adjective, put it in the feminine singular, add -mente:

Why feminine? Because -mente was once a separate noun, the Latin mens, mind, and that noun was feminine. Rapidamente started life as something like with a quick mind, and the adjective agreed with the noun it was describing. The noun has long since shrunk into a suffix, but the agreement stayed behind. Spanish, Italian and French did exactly the same thing, which is why all four languages have the same trick.

Adjectives that do not change for gender - most of those ending in -e, -l, -z or -s - simply take -mente on the one form they have:

The accent disappears

Look again at the tables: rápido has an accent and rapidamente does not. fácil has one and facilmente does not. sério, seriamente. This is not a typo, and it is the thing learners most often get wrong on paper.

The reason is stress. Portuguese only writes an acute or circumflex accent to mark a stressed syllable the spelling rules would not otherwise predict. Once -mente arrives, the main stress of the word shifts onto -men-, so the accent on the old stressed syllable has nothing to mark and is dropped. The same goes for último, which becomes ultimamente. The one mark that survives is the tilde, because the tilde is about a nasal vowel, not stress, and a nasal vowel stays nasal however long the word gets.

Two adverbs in a row

When two -mente adverbs are joined by e, Portuguese drops the suffix from the first and keeps it on the second:

rápida e facilmente - quickly and easily

The first adjective stays in its feminine form, because it is still, grammatically, waiting for the -mente at the end of the phrase. It is a formal, written habit; in conversation you are more likely to hear two separate phrases.

What Brazilians actually say

Here is where the textbook and the street part company. A few -mente adverbs are everywhere in everyday Brazilian speech, mostly the ones that comment on a whole sentence:

Isso é realmente importante. - This is really important.

Obviamente ele não sabe. - Obviously he doesn't know.

Infelizmente não posso. - Unfortunately I can't.

realmente, exatamente, provavelmente, finalmente, simplesmente and infelizmente are all in the first thousand words of the language, and you will hear them daily.

But for how someone does something, Brazilians very often skip -mente and use the plain masculine adjective as the adverb, frozen in one form:

Ele fala rápido. - He talks fast.

Ela chegou rápido. - She got here quickly.

Or they reach for a phrase with de forma, de maneira or de um jeito:

de forma rápida - quickly, in a quick way

de um jeito diferente - differently, in a different way

The -mente form is never wrong, but on a manner adverb it can sound like you are reading from a report. Recognise it, use the sentence adverbs freely, and for manner, do what Brazilians do.

For slowness in particular, forget lentamente in speech. The word everyone uses is devagar, and its opposite is depressa:

Fala mais devagar, por favor. - Speak more slowly, please.

That sentence alone will earn its keep in your first week in Brazil.

The adverbs that do most of the work

The most useful adverbs in Portuguese are short, old, and not built from anything. They have to be learned as words, and they are worth it:

A few of these deserve a note.

já and ainda. Already and still, and between them they carry a lot of the tense logic English does with auxiliaries. Ele já saiu is he has already left; Eu ainda não sei is I still don't know. Já in a question is the Portuguese yet: Você já comeu?, have you eaten yet?

nunca and the double negative. nunca can go before the verb on its own, Eu nunca vou, or after it with não in front, Eu não vou nunca. Both mean I never go, and the second is not a double negative in the English sense. Portuguese negatives pile up happily.

muito does two jobs. As an adverb it never changes: Ela é muito bonita, she is very pretty; Ele trabalha muito, he works a lot. As an adjective in front of a noun it agrees like any other: muitas casas, many houses. If it is modifying a noun, it agrees; if it is modifying anything else, it stays muito.

Three words for only. só, apenas and somente all mean only, and they are interchangeable in almost every sentence: Eu só quero café, I only want coffee. só is the one Brazilians say; apenas and somente are a notch more formal and turn up more in writing. Pick só and you will never sound wrong.

Where adverbs go

Manner adverbs usually come straight after the verb, or after the object if there is one:

Ela canta muito bem. - She sings very well.

Ela fala inglês muito bem. - She speaks English very well.

Frequency adverbs like sempre and nunca, and já and ainda, usually sit in front of the verb, as in English. Sentence adverbs like infelizmente and obviamente go at the front, with a comma if you want one. Portuguese word order is looser than English here, so these are defaults rather than rules, but they are the defaults that sound natural.

Mistakes English speakers make

Bom for bem. Good and well are distinct in English, and plenty of native English speakers mix them up anyway. Portuguese is stricter. Bom describes a noun (O café é bom); bem describes a verb or a state (Estou bem, Ela fala bem). The everyday answer to how are you is Estou bem. Estou bom (in speech, tô bom) exists, but it does narrower jobs: I've got over it, after an illness, or I'm all right as I am, no more for me thanks. For the everyday answer, bem is the safe choice.

Mau for mal. The same split on the bad side: mau is the adjective (Ele é um homem mau, he is a bad man), mal is the adverb (Ela está mal, she is unwell or in a bad way). In Brazil the two sound identical, so this is a spelling mistake that natives make too, but it is still a mistake.

Keeping the accent. Rápidamente, fácilmente and últimamente are Spanish spellings. In Portuguese the accent goes: rapidamente, facilmente, ultimamente.

False friends. The -mente rule is so transparent that learners assume the meaning is too. Four common ones are not:

Atualmente is the big one: it comes from atual, current, and saying it when you mean actually produces a sentence about the present day that nobody asked about. For actually, use na verdade or realmente.

What to do next

Learn the short adverbs as vocabulary - they are already in the Portuguese course and you will meet them in every lesson. Treat -mente as a decoding tool first: when you see one, strip the suffix, find the adjective, and you know the word. Then start producing the sentence adverbs, realmente, provavelmente, infelizmente, because Brazilians genuinely use them.

Adverbs lean on adjectives, so if the feminine forms are still shaky, go back to Portuguese adjectives first. And pair this with por vs para, the other article in this chapter: between the two, you have the small words that make a plain sentence sound like a Brazilian built it.