¿Why do so many people fail to convert adjectives into adverbs?

Question

It seems many people are ignorant of the difference between adjectives and adverbs. An adjective may only modify a noun. In order to modify an adjective, verb or adverb, an adverb must be used. This is a common problem among many English speakers and is prominent among many of the questions and answers on this very site.
To give one example, a current question remarks 'Why Do Canadians Spell So Many Words Wrong??'
Here 'wrong' should be 'wrongly' as it is modifying the verb 'spell'.
Probably the most common mistake in this regard is the use of 'good' in place of 'well'. My local supermarket displays a sign advertising its own brand washing powder with the sentence '...cleans as good as the leading brand'.
As it is the verb 'cleans' that is being modified, 'good' should in fact be 'well'.

Answer 1

Are you an angry English grammar teacher??

Answer 2

the rules for English have been only newly lay-ed down about 200 years before that it was an every changing language. Shakespeare did not follow the rules of the English language and misspelled often or made his own way of spelling words.

but Upper class made the rules for language as it equalled power.

but now we are back to the every changing ways again.
it is changing now with technology.
everything is so fast if we had to take time to fix language to rules it would be too long (texting) or take too much time and could sound pompous and old.
English is now spoken differently so the influence come into writing.
it has always been happening it cant be stopped.




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after reading some of the other answers
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also just in case Ive spell ed something wrong I'm dyslexic it makes me very angry when Ive try-ed my best to put together a nice answer to be told sorry you spell-ed this and that wrong.

also yahoo spell check is terrible if you write long answers it wont work, if word look similar i cant tell the differences witch means it take me a lot longer to answer. if i had to apply the English rules also it would take me all day so bear in mind criticising bad grammar and spelling is very hurtful to someone with dyslexia.

Answer 3

Read a dictionary. Both 'wrong' and 'good' have been used as adverbs in the English language since the 13th century. It wasn't until the 19th century that school teachers decided that 'good' was not a preferred adverb and insisted on using 'well' instead.

Definition in Merriam Webster for wrong (adv): without regard for what is proper or just . Sounds a lot like your sentence up there, doesn't it?

Answer 4

It just seems to me that there is this constant trend in English towards emphasizing word order over all other signifiers of semantic meaning. I think the main reason adverbs are becoming used less and less is because people can understand perfectly well if someone uses an adjective in its place.

Answer 5

Most of what you say is correct, but I disagree about "wrongly". "Wrong" can be either an adjective or an adverb (or a noun or a verb). As an adverb, it means "in the wrong way"--exactly what the poster meant to say (albeit wrongly) about Canadian spelling. "Wrongly" is also an adverb, but it most often means "incorrectly". The only time "wrongly" must be used in place of adverbial "wrong" is when it precedes the verb.

Answer 6

Many of these people couldn't tell you what an adjective or an adverb is, thus they have no reason to differentiate between them. Normally, those who are fairly educated at least distinguish between "good" and "well." The other ones are harder, though, because they're used less often.

Answer 7

Quite right what people who grow up speaking English don't know is that other people try to study their language so hard and get things right some even get judged /graded for it. These people (could say foreigners) then get here and what happens, everyone is speaking English so different from the English grammar with alot of jargon.
Then we think about all the effort we made to learn the language right and yet the owners can't be bothered to speak it right.
Unfortunately that doesn't answer your question but i could say its a human thing taking thing what you have got for granted.

Answer 8

That's nothing. Have you seen how people spell? How about the use of the apostrophe? Or....sentences that make no sense at all!
I don't pretend to know all the rules or even to be able to use the English language to its full beauty, but the bad spelling bugs me more than the adjective/adverb thing. ( I must say...I probably make plenty of adj/adv mistakes myself!).

Answer 9

THIS is what bothers you about the writing abilities, or lack thereof, of so many on YAnswers?! How about simple, common spelling mistakes and their refusal to use the spell check? Atrocious spelling can often be fixed simply by using the spell check. You need some knowledge of grammar to be able to use adverbs correctLY.

Answer 10

You correctly point out a frequent error. I dislike the Americanism 'real bad' which should be, of course, really bad, unless the expression is being made in opposition to another 'virtual' form of non-good. Only fellow pedants will get what I mean here!

Answer 11

My friend, you've raised just one of the many transgressions against the language of which users of this site are guilty. Anyone pained by sloppy English should give Yahoo! Answers a very wide berth, indeed.