Word building!

Learning English can be very difficult for some people. They can be overwhelmed by English grammar tenses to start with. Plus, when you just about understand a rule, along comes a list of exceptions!

But, there are some patterns which you can follow. Yes, yes, there are some exceptions, but a rule which is helpful 90% of the time is still a good rule to learn, isn't it?

I'm talking about creating adjectives (przymiotniki) and adverbs (przysłowki) from nouns (rzeczowniki).

A simple example.

Luck - noun

Lucky - adjective

Luckily - adverb

or

Fortune - noun

Fortunate - adjective

Fortunately - adverb

Here are some simple rules to guide you.

Quite often you can make an adjective from a noun, by adding a suffix.

-y sun/sunny

-ate passion/passionate

-able fashion/fashionable

Nouns which end with -ence, we can often make the adjective by changing the ending to -ent.

Violence/violent

Confidence/confident

If you want to make an adjective negative, common prefixes include, im-/un-/il-/ir-.

polite/impolite

happy/unhappy

legal/illegal

relevant/irrelevant

If an adjective ends with -ful and you want to make it negative, we usually change the suffix to -less.

Hopeful/hopeless

useful/useless

Adverbs - the majority end with -ly

finally

slowly

perfectly

seriously

quickly

Of course there are some adverbs which don't end in -ly, such as fast, always and never, plus some adjectives which do end in -ly, like friendly and lovely, but don't focus on the exceptions! You have to start somewhere. My aim is to guide you a little. Remembering a few basic rules will at least point you in the right direction. So good luck! #nativespeaker, #onlinelessons, #groupcourses

Until next time.......