The lesson “Adverb formation” showed where adverbs come from; now we use them in real speech. You need two sets. The first answers the question how?: polako (slowly), brzo (fast), lepo (nicely). These are adverbs of manner. The second answers how much? or to what degree?: vrlo (very), previše (too, too much), jedva (barely). These are adverbs of degree, and they turn a quality, sometimes an action, up or down.
The heart of the lesson is choosing the Serbian “very”. English already draws the lines for you: “very good”, but “I love it a lot” and “much better”. Serbian draws the same lines with its own words: vrlo dobar “very good”, Mnogo te volim “I love you a lot”, mnogo bolje “much better”. Before an adjective there are three words for “very” (vrlo, veoma, jako), each with its own register, that is, where it fits: conversation, formal writing or anywhere. You will also meet the colloquial mnogo dobar and the first particles, samo, baš, čak: little words that highlight another word.
Adverbs of manner: exactly how
Most of these you can already build: the adverb is the adjective’s neuter (pažljiv → pažljivo). Here is a working set for every day, plus a few “ready-made” adverbs that do not come from an adjective and are simply learned as they are: ovako/tako/kako (like this / like that / how), peške (on foot), napamet (by heart), zajedno (together).
Adverbs of degree: how much
An adverb of degree usually goes before an adjective or another adverb and changes its strength, from “barely” to “too much”, just as English very and too do; a few also go with a verb: jedva čujem “I can barely hear”. Here is the whole scale:
Note that jedva čekam is word for word English “I can hardly wait”. Next to the scale sit two useful words of approximation, skoro and gotovo “almost” (they are synonyms), and the word of measure toliko “so, so much, that much”. The first two soften a statement to “almost, but not quite”; toliko stresses that there is a lot of the quality, more than you thought:
Be careful with skoro: it also has a meaning related to time, “recently” or “soon” depending on context, but next to an adjective or adverb it almost always means “almost”: Skoro sam gotov is “I’m almost done”. And gotovo also means “ready, done”: Gotovo! is “Done!”. One more thing: Nisam znao, “I didn’t know”, is a past form built like Radio sam “I worked” in “biti in the present”; “The perfect (perfekat)” covers it in full.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Adverbs of manner (načinski prilozi) answer “how?”; adverbs of degree and quantity (prilozi za količinu) answer “how much?” and usually go before an adjective or another adverb. Particles are separate: they highlight a word instead of measuring a quality.
How: manner
How much: the degree scale
Three “verys”, the verb and the comparative
Particles
🍪No advertising cookies — only the essential storage that keeps you signed in and saves your progress. Privacy Policy