Adjectives & Adverbs

Adjectives are descriptive words, they are used to add colour or interest to nouns and pronouns.
Adverbs tell us more about the Verb, they can also tell us more about the adjective.

Adjectives

There are several different adjectives:

1. Descriptive or quality adjectives
   – The intelligent/obedient/talented/funny girl
2. Adjectives of order
   – The horse came first/second/last in the race
3. Adjectives of quantity/number
   – three/some/few/many dogs
   – every/all/neither boy
4. Proper adjectives
   – The Durban/Western Cape coastlines are beautiful
   – The July rains are quite heavy
5. Demonstrative adjectives
   – that/this house
   – these/those houses
6. Interrogative adjectives
   – whose/what/which car?
7. Possessive adjectives
   – her/his/my/our/their/its/your laptop
8. Compound adjectives (adjectives joined by a hyphen)
   – a well-deserved win
   – the half-ripe apple

Adverbs

The different types of adverbs are:

1. Manner (how?)
   – angrily, hungrily, quickly, fast, well (normally ends with -ly)
2. Place (where?)
   – there, here, far, near, home, down, up, home
3. Time (when?)
   – now, yesterday, today, tomorrow, later, soon, immediately
4. Degree (to what extent?)
   – rather, almost, nearly, hardly, extremely, just, too, very, quite, fairly, really
5. Certainty (probability of something happening)
   – surely, perhaps, definitely, likely, undoubtedly, probably, absolutely
6. Frequency (how often?)
   – always, never, frequently, twice, once, regularly, often, sometimes, seldom

Adverbs also  change the nature of the sentence, expressing the speaker’s opinion, and are normally placed in the beginning of a sentence.

Perhaps she will win the lotto

Adverbs have degrees of comparison.

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