You have probably learned that an adverb modifies a verb, much like an adjective modifies a noun. The way they do this is by answering some of the usual journalistic questions: “how, when, where, why?” Adverbs are words like “here”, “now”, “always”, “then”, and so forth. But additionally, prepositional phrases function adverbially: “in this house”, “last year”, “because of love”.
Adverbs can also modify adjectives, prepositions, or other adverbs. Essentially, if something modifies a noun, it’s an adjective; if it modifies anything else, it’s an adverb. (Except for the nouns in the nfr αΈ₯r construction which serve to qualify or limit the adjectives.)
Primary adverbs
Like nb is the only primary adjective (not used for another purpose, not derived from another word), Egyptian has very few primary adverbs.
Derived adverbs
English likes to derive adverbs from adjectives with -ly: “badly”, “happily”, “smugly”, or words for time like “every day” or “today”, or even pronouns, like “I did this myself“, where “myself” does not say who I did the action to or for; it says how the action was done.
Egyptian does all of these too:
- From adjectives
- Some adverbs look just like the corresponding adjective: π€ππ°π nfr “good” also means “well”; π ¨π°π wr “great” also means “greatly”, “much”.
- Some are formed by adding -w to an adjective, like π»π°ππΏπ ±π κ₯κ£w “greatly, hugely” from π»π°ππΏπ κ₯κ£ “large”, but since the w is weak, often κ₯κ£w is written as κ₯κ£(w), so it’s like nfr and wr anyhow.
- Some are formed by adding -t to an adjective, like π ¨π΄ππ°π wr.t “very”, which we saw in adjectival sentences.
- Some are a preposition plus an adjective in nominalized feminine form, forming a prepositional phrase: π π³πΏπ m mκ£wt “anew, newly”, lit. “in what is new”.
- Time
- Some are nouns or noun phrases for time: ππ³π·ππ°πΎπΈ αΈt “forever”, πππ°π³ mjn “today”, π³π±π€π°π rκ₯ nb “every day”.
- Some are those same words, but in prepositional phrases: π πππ°π³ m mjn “today”, “in this day”; πππ³π·ππ°πΎπΈ n αΈt “forever”.
- From pronouns
- By following the noun ππ³π or ππ΄ αΈs “self” with a suffix pronoun, one gets “myself”, “yourself”, etc. which can be used in the emphatic way: αΈ«r nswt αΈs.f “next to the king himself“.
- These emphatic pronouns can modify other suffix pronouns, so may sometimes be better translated “own”: π ππ°π€π΄ππ³ππ΄ pr.s αΈs.s “in her own house”, lit. “in her house herself”.
- By following the noun ππ³π or ππ΄ αΈs “self” with a suffix pronoun, one gets “myself”, “yourself”, etc. which can be used in the emphatic way: αΈ«r nswt αΈs.f “next to the king himself“.
Prepositional adverbs
Just like in English, you can use most prepositions without an object, making them an object: Ε‘m jm “walk in”.
In the lessons on prepositions, you will have seen that when used as a standalone adverb, many of the prepositions have a different form, like jm for m, αΈ₯nκ₯.w for αΈ₯nκ₯, and so forth. A preposition may be followed by πππ°π jrj, which is itself the adverb form of ππ r, to form an adverbial form as well: π πππ°π mm jrj “among (them)”.
A compound preposition such as π ππ°ππ±π€ m-αΈ₯κ£t “in front of” needs no special treatment to be standalone, since it already is a prepositional phrase by itself: π’ππ°π»π ππ°ππ±π€ κ₯αΈ₯κ₯ m αΈ₯κ£t “stand up in front.”
English can require a prepositional object where Egyptian does not, so you may need to supply one: if a sentence ended with mm jrj, such as “we walked mm jrj“, a strict translation would be “we walked among”, but the English translation might be better rendered as “we walked among them”. When the prepositional object was clear, the Egyptians omitted it more often than we do.
Word order
When modifying other words, adverbs usually stand before a modified preposition. We saw an example in αΈ₯rw r “apart from”, which functions as a compound preposition; αΈ₯rw modifies r.
Adverbs usually follow a modified adjective or other adverb:
ππ
ππ΄π€ππ°ππ
¨π΄ππ°π mr nfr wrt
“a very (or greatly) beautiful pyramid”
With wrt in particular in adjectival sentences, remember that when it modifies the subject, it follows the subject; when it modifies the predicate, it follows the predicate. nfr mr wrt would not be a valid sentence, because wrt as an adjective would be feminine and mr is not feminine. nfr wrt mr, however, is a valid sentence, because wrt is the correct form to be an adverb modifying the predicate nfr:
π€ππ°ππ
¨π΄ππ°πππ
ππ΄ nfr wrt mr
“the pyramid is very (or greatly) beautiful”
(not something like “the greatly pyramid is beautiful”)
Adverbs are not usually modifiers for nouns, although we saw a few exceptions in which jm is used as one, as in bκ£k jm “the servant there”, i.e. “your humble servant.” But those are by far the exception, not the rule.
Comparison
As with adjectives, the preposition r can be used to compare an adverb to something, such as:
π
π³πΏπππ°ππ±ππππ°π m mκ£wt r αΈ«t nbt
“more newly than anything”
(lit. “greatly with respect to everything”)
Summary: Adverbs
Vocabulary
- π³πΏπ mκ£w “new”
- πππ°π³ mjn “today”
- ππ³π or ππ΄ αΈs “self”
- With a suffix pronoun, forms emphatic pronouns: “he did it himself“, etc.
Exercises
(forthcoming)