Countryside

German Adverbs

Adverbs are words like nicely, easily or slowly which are usually used in combination with a verb or an adjective in order to describe them. An adverb will therefore give you further information about when, how or in what circumstances something happens.

For example:
She was nicely dressed.
I passed the test easily.
Eat slowly!

Most English adverbs end in -ly. German adverbs however, are generally spelled the same as their adjective counterpart and do not have a change of ending. This makes life much easier for you when you want to insert an adverb into a sentence.

For example:
Sie war schön angezogen. ⇨ She was nicely dressed.
Ich habe den Test einfach bestanden. ⇨ I passed the test easily.
Iss langsam! ⇨ Eat slowly!

As you can see the adjectives schön, einfach and langsam all stay the same when used as an adverb and do not have a change of ending.

There are also adverbs that don't have an -ly ending in English. They are usually found in one of the four main adverb groups. These are:

• Adverbs of time
• Adverbs of place
• Adverbs of manner and degree
• Adverbs of cause

---

Adverbs of Time

Adverbs that describe time include words like today and always. Here is a list of frequently used ones in German and their English counterpart:

bald (soon)	heute (today)	noch (still)
da (then)	immer (always)	oft (often)
damals (back then)	inzwischen (in the meantime, meanwhile)	schon (already)
danach (afterwards)	irgendwann (some time)	seitdem (since then)
dann (then)	jetzt (now)	sofort (immediately)
davor (before that)	lang (long)	übermorgen (the day after tomorrow)
endlich (finally)	manchmal (sometimes)	vorbei (to be over)
früher (before, formerly)	meistens (mostly)	vorgestern (the day before yesterday)
gerade (right now)	morgen (tomorrow)	vorher (before, beforehand)
gestern (yesterday)	nachher (later)	wieder (again)
gleich (in a bit)	nie (never)	zuerst (first)

Note that you can also express days of the week and other time based nouns as adverbs. You simply add the letter -s to the end of the noun.

For example:
montags ⇨ on Mondays
dienstags ⇨ on Tuesdays
morgens ⇨ in the morning
mittags ⇨ at noon
nachmittags ⇨ in the afternoon
abends ⇨ in the evening

Example sentences:

Damals gab es noch kein Internet. ⇨ There was no internet back then.
Er spielt gerade Fußball. ⇨ He’s playing football right now.
Ich gehe inzwischen zur Bank. ⇨ I'll go to the bank in the meantime.

---

Adverbs of Place

German adverbs of place can be tricky to get to grips with as they behave very differently from their English counterparts. You can categorise German adverbs of place even further into three groups.

• The first group are adverbs where there is no movement involved and the adverb is simply referring to a location. Here is a list:



da (there)	dort (there)	draußen (outdoors)
drinnen (indoors)	drüben (over there)	heim (home)
hier (here)	hinten (behind)	irgendwo (somewhere)
links (left)	nirgends (nowhere)	nirgendwo (nowhere)
oben (up)	rechts (right)	überall (everywhere)
unten (down)	vorne (in front)	woanders (somewhere else)




Note that da and dort are synonyms and both mean there. The same applies to nirgends and nirgendwo. They both mean nowhere.

Example Sentences:
Da arbeitet mein Vater. ⇨ My father works there.
Der Schlüssel liegt irgendwo im Haus. ⇨ The key is somewhere in the house.
Die Post ist ganz woanders. ⇨ The post office is somewhere completely different.



• The second group are adverbs of place that are moving to a place. In this case you use the adverb hin, meaning to. Here is a list of them:



dahin - (to) there	dorthin - (to) there	hierhin - (to) here
irgendwohin - (to) somewhere	nirgendwohin - nowhere	überallhin - everywhere
woandershin - somewhere else




As you can see, the adverb hin is often added to another adverb to show that there is some movement involved.

Example Sentences:
Wir ziehen dahin. ⇨ We're moving there.
Ich habe meinen Schlüssel irgendwohin gelegt. ⇨ I put my key somewhere.
Er möchte lieber woandershin gehen. ⇨ He would rather go somewhere else.



• The third group are adverbs of place that are moving from a place. In this case you use the adverb her meaning from. As with hin, this is often added to another adverb. Here is a list of them:



daher - (from) there	dorther - (from) there	irgendwoher - (from) somewhere
nirgendwoher - nowhere	überallher - from all over	woandersher - (from) somewhere else




Example Sentences:
Wir kommen gerade von dorther. ⇨ We're just coming from there.
Diese CD habe ich von irgendwoher bekommen. ⇨ I’ve got that CD from somewhere.
Die Leute auf dem Oktoberfest kommen von überallher. ⇨ The people at the Oktoberfest come from all over the world.

---

Adverbs of Manner and Degree

These adverbs show how and to what extent an action occurred. These adverbs are pretty straightforward as they coordinate quite well with their English counterpart. But see for yourself, here is a list:

allein (alone)	gerne (gladly)	irgendwie (somehow)
nur (only)	so (like this, like that)	wenigstens (at least)

Example Sentences:
Sie wohnt allein. ⇨ She lives on her own.
Irgendwie habe ich es geschafft, die Arbeit zu erledigen. ⇨ Somehow I managed to get the job done.
Ich mache das immer so. ⇨ I always do that like this.

---

Adverbs of Cause

The last group of adverbs are the adverbs of cause. These adverbs indicate the purpose or reason of a statement and mostly link two sentences. Here is a list of commonly used adverbs of cause:

also (so)	darum (therefore)	deshalb (therefore)
deswegen (therefore)	nämlich (namely)	trotzdem (nevertheless)

Note that darum, deshalb and deswegen are all synonyms and they all mean therefore. With these adverbs, it's best to stick to the one you feel most comfortable with.

Example Sentences:
Ich hatte also recht. ⇨ So I was right.
Der Film war sehr schlecht, darum sind wir nach Hause gegangen. ⇨ The movie was very bad; therefore we went home.
Er ist krank, trotzdem möchte er mitkommen. ⇨ He's ill, nevertheless he'd like to come with us.