Adverbs
die Adverbien
German adverbs describe a verb, an adjective or a whole sentence and never take an ending: heute, hier, schnell.
Gestern bin ich ins Kino gegangen — or is it ins Kino bin ich gestern gegangen? English adverbs float around freely; German has a fixed order for them, called TeKaMoLo.
No ending — one word does two jobs
ShortcutGerman has no adverb ending. schnell means both “quick” and “quickly”. There is no equivalent of English -ly.
Same word, two different jobs. The difference is not in an ending but in what the word is looking at.
Das ist ein schnelles Auto.
That’s a fast car. → ADJECTIVE: looks at the noun and takes an ending
Er fährt schnell.
He drives fast. → ADVERB: looks at the verb and never changes
Practical upshot: with an adverb you never think about endings. Adjective endings are the most feared table in German; with adverbs that table never opens.
Three families — the list to save
| Family | Question | Common ones |
|---|---|---|
| Time temporal | wann? | heute · morgen · gestern · jetzt · bald · immer · oft · manchmal · nie · früh · spät |
| Place lokal | wo? wohin? | hier · dort · da · oben · unten · links · rechts · draußen · drinnen · überall |
| Manner modal | wie? | gern · schnell · langsam · gut · leider · vielleicht · sehr · zusammen · allein |
These three families cover almost every adverb you will meet at A1. Don’t try to memorise them — hold on to the question word and it tells you which family an adverb belongs to.
Frequency adverbs — on a line
This is the most-used group, and the difference between them is a scale: from never to always.
| German | English | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| immer | always | 100% |
| meistens | mostly | 80% |
| oft | often | 60% |
| manchmal | sometimes | 40% |
| selten | rarely | 15% |
| nie | never | 0% |
nie is already negative — you don’t add nicht next to it. There is no such thing as Ich gehe nie nicht (English has the same rule: no “I never don’t go”).
Ich trinke oft Kaffee.
I often drink coffee.
Ich gehe nie ins Kino.
I never go to the cinema.
More than one adverb: TeKaMoLo
This is the genuinely hard part. When a sentence has two or three adverbs, the order is not free. Germans have their own abbreviation for it: Te-Ka-Mo-Lo.
| Order | What | Question | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Te | Time · temporal | wann? | heute |
| Ka | Reason · kausal | warum? | wegen der Arbeit |
| Mo | Manner · modal | wie? | mit dem Bus |
| Lo | Place · lokal | wohin? wo? | nach Berlin |
All together: Ich fahre heute wegen der Arbeit mit dem Bus nach Berlin. — “Today I’m taking the bus to Berlin for work.” English usually puts place before time (“to Berlin today”); German puts time first and place last.
At A1 you will rarely meet all four at once. The one thing to memorise: time first, place last. Ich gehe heute ins Kino is right; Ich gehe ins Kino heute sounds foreign.
What you just learned
Ich trinke ___ Kaffee.
Show the answer
gern. Use gern to say you do something with pleasure.
“Ich gehe ins Kino heute.” is correct.
Show the answer
False. In German the time adverb always comes before the place expression: Ich gehe heute ins Kino.
He drives fast.
Show the answer
Er fährt schnell. — schnell. An adverb takes no ending; German has no equivalent of -ly.
Traps
Putting an ending on an adverb
An adverb is never inflected. If the word that describes the verb gets an ending, the sentence breaks.
Er fährt schnelles.
an ending on the adverb
Er fährt schnell.
He drives fast.
Place first, time last
In English “I’m going to the cinema today” is perfectly natural, with the place first. In German time comes first, place after.
Ich gehe ins Kino heute.
order reversed
Ich gehe heute ins Kino.
I’m going to the cinema today.
Starting with the adverb and forgetting to flip the subject
An adverb can open the sentence — but then it fills the first slot and the subject drops behind the verb. The rule is on the word order page.
Heute ich gehe ins Kino.
the verb is not in second position
Heute gehe ich ins Kino.
Today I’m going to the cinema.
Mixing up gern and gut
gern means “gladly, with pleasure”, gut means “well”. Ich spiele gut Fußball = I play football well (skill). Ich spiele gern Fußball = I like playing football (pleasure). They tell you two completely different things.
Build the sentence yourself
Tap the words and put them in order. This is the hardest part of German — and there are no options to pick from, you build it.
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tap the words
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tap the words
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tap the words
Know this before the test
The core of the topic in three lines, then the mistakes people make most often.
- Adverbs are never inflected
An adjective describing the verb stays bare: Er fährt schnell. Before a noun it takes an ending: ein schnelles Auto.
Er singt schön.
- The frequency ladder
immer → oft → manchmal → selten → nie. Usually placed after the verb: Ich gehe oft ins Kino.
Ich gehe nie ins Kino.
- gern adds liking to a verb
Ich spiele gern Fußball = I like playing football. Its comparative is lieber.
Ich trinke gern Kaffee.
- An adverb can move to the front
For emphasis: Heute gehe ich ins Kino. The verb does not move from second place.
Morgen komme ich.
Er fährt schnelle.
Er fährt schnell.
An adjective used as an adverb takes no ending.
Morgen ich komme.
Morgen komme ich.
When an adverb moves to the front, the verb stays in second position.
Ich gern spiele Fußball.
Ich spiele gern Fußball.
gern comes after the verb.
noch fertig? (when you mean “finished already?”)
schon fertig?
schon is “already”, noch is “still”.
Test yourself
Tap an answer — we will look at why together.
He drives fast.
I’m going to the cinema today.
Which one means “never”?
What does Ich spiele gern Fußball. mean?
In TeKaMoLo, where does place go?
Which one is an adjective, not an adverb?
Practice done — –
To finish the topic, take the full test: score 60% and it is marked as done on your level path.
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Adverb pocket card
This whole page — tables, traps, examples — as one PDF. Download it, print it, run through it before the exam.
Related topics
Comparative and superlative
schön · schöner · am schönsten
The Steigerung (comparison of adjectives) is how German compares qualities: schön, schöner, am schönsten.
Word order
Heute gehe ich ins Kino
German word order puts the conjugated verb in second position, whatever comes first: Heute gehe ich ins Kino.
Numbers · time · date
21 = einundzwanzig
German numbers, clock times and dates work like this: 21 = einundzwanzig, 10 Uhr, am 5.