Yesterday we talked about adverbs formed from adjectives. Today let’s gather some details about non-adjectival adverbs.

They are so called original adverbs. In fact they are old forms of various nouns most often, e.g. prawie almost, chyba surely, rano in the morning, wczoraj yesterday, czasem sometimes, nocami in the nights. A generally accepted opinion does not exist for the classification of this group of words. Sometimes is difficult to distinguish them from particles, and some authors link together both these groups indeed. Others distinguish addings (tak yes, nie no, z pewnością surely) and modalizers. Some derivative adverbs (pochodne przysłówki) can belong to this group (prawdopodobnie probably, już already, jeszcze yet, zupełnie completely). E.g. short answer tak ‘yes’ is treated as an interjection, a particle, an adverbial pronoun or an adverb (because formally it seems to answer the question how?).

There also exist adverbs which are formally identical to prepositions, e.g. był już wewnątrz ‘he has already been inside’ (adverb), but był już wewnątrz nory ‘he has already been inside the burrow’ (preposition). Some scholars count also adverbial pronouns among adverbs, e.g. tutaj here, nijak by no means, którędy which way, wszędzie everywhere, dotychczas so far , adverbial numerals, e.g. potrójnie triply, trojako threefoldly, po pierwsze firstly, trzy razy three times, as well as some words called sometimes numerical pronouns, and sometimes pronominal numerals, e.g. tylekroć so many times,  ile how many’.

There exist adverbs (named traditionally adverbial expressions) which consist of a preposition and a noun that follows it. To students’ nuisance, Polish uses split spelling and spelling as one word very inconsistently here: na pewno certainly, naprawdę really, od razu at once, dokoła round, na czas on time, wewnątrz inside, na ostatku at last , nareszcie finally, przed świtem before the dawn, na dole below, po polsku in Polish, za dużo too much. In spite of the spelling, in respect of their meaning they are single adverbs rather than groups of words. You cannot ask the question “na czym? “(on what?) – na dole (below), but only “gdzie?” (where?) – na dole. However, sometimes there exist prepositional expressions which are actually formally identical to adverbial expressions, e.g. przed świtem can be the answer for both before what? and when? – e.g. “schował się do swojej nory z obawy przed świtem“ (‘he put himself away into his burrow because of the fear of the dawn’, preposition + noun), but “był niewyspany, bo musiał wstać przed świtem“ (‘he was sleepy because he had to get up before the dawn’, adverb).

It could be a little confusing, but practice makes the master!

Good luck and let me know if you have questions:)

Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)