The machine
Take the FEMININE form of the adjective, glue on -mente — done. It's the English "-ly":
| rápido → rápida → rapidamente | quickly |
| calmo → calma → calmamente | calmly |
| perfeito → perfeita → perfeitamente | perfectly |
Two details worth knowing
1 · The accent disappears: rápido has an accent, rapidamente doesn't. Same for fácil → facilmente.
2 · Two adverbs in a row? Only the LAST one takes -mente: Ela falou calma e claramente. (calmly and clearly)
The top ten you'll hear daily
| geralmente | usually | infelizmente | unfortunately |
| realmente | really | felizmente | fortunately |
| exatamente | exactly | provavelmente | probably |
| finalmente | finally | claramente | clearly |
| completamente | completely | normalmente | normally |
Street exception
Spoken Brazil often uses the bare masculine adjective as an adverb: Fala rápido! (speak quickly), Dirige devagar (devagar = slowly, already an adverb). Both fala rapidamente and fala rápido are correct — the short one is more casual.
Practise this chapter
9 pool questions plus generated ones — 20 fresh practice questions, reshuffled every visit, inside the grammar library.
Practise Adverbs in -mente — 20 questions →This chapter is taught in Lição 19 of the course (level A2). Rumo is a complete Brazilian Portuguese course, A1 to B2; level A1 is free.