✧ Spanish grammar - Adverbs in -mente ✧
Bijou está sentada en la hierba, jugando alegremente con un ramo de flores.
Unlike other classes like nouns or adjectives, which have many possible suffixes, adverbs are very easy to create in Spanish: just add the suffix -mente to an adjective in the feminine form. For example, rápido -> rápida -> rápidamente, elegante -> elegante (no change in form) -> elegantemente.
The rule of using the feminine form as a base may seem pretty arbitrary at first glance, but it's actually very logical. Even more so if you have already encountered the Spanish word "mente" ("mind"), as this word and the adverbial suffix -mente have the exact same etymology - both come from the Latin "mens" ("mind" or "mood").
In Latin, "mens" came to be used in the ablative case ("mens" becomes "mente") along with an adjective, to indicate the way in which an action was being performed. "Sed obstinata mente perfer" means "but endure it with a stubborn mind", or, as we would translate it in Spanish, "pero lo soporta con una mente obstinada". "Et patriae rigida mente negavit opem" means "and with a rigid mind he refused aid to his homeland", or, in Spanish, "y con una mente rĂgida rechazĂł ayuda para su patria".
You can see from the Spanish translations how this structure was eventually grammaticalized until it became a suffix - "obstinata mente" turned into "obstinadamente" and "rigida mente" resulted in "rĂgidamente". This structure was widespread enough that it survived Latin and swept into most Romance languages, either as -mente in languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, or as -ment in languages like French and Catalonian (the only exception to this that I know of is Romanian, where there is no adverbial suffix).
The fact that the adjective in these verbs used to accompany the feminine noun "mens" also explains why in all Romance languages the feminine must be taken as a base to form the adverb. Note as well that, in Spanish, you can add this suffix to a superlative ending in -Ăsimo, to make the adverb a superlative as well. For example, lento -> lentĂsimo -> lentĂsima -> lentĂsimamente.
Adverbs in -mente have a couple more particularities. Firstly, in words like "rápidamente", you might think that the accent is in an odd place for Spanish, as no Spanish words naturally have an accent in the fourth or more syllable starting from the right. But this is a rare case where the suffix isn't fully considered part of the word, so accentuation rules apply as if -mente was a separate word. Therefore, "rápidamente" has an accent for the same reason "rápida" does.
Secondly, it is possible in Spanish to graphically separate the adjective and the suffix when there are two or more adverbs in -mente next to each other. You can say "silenciosamente, lentamente y cuidadosamente", but it's more natural to say "silenciosa, lenta y cuidadosamente".
All these characteristics find its origin in that "adjective + mens in the ablative" Latin structure explained above: if you consider -mente as just the word "mente" and add "con" to make the ablative, suddenly it makes sense why the adjective can be a superlative, why it has its own accent and why it can drop the -mente when accompanied by other adverbs. "Con rápida mente" = "rápidamente", "con silenciosa, lenta y cuidadosa mente" = "silenciosa, lenta y cuidadosamente", "con lentĂsimamente" = "lentĂsimamente".
✧ Final note ✧
The formation of adverbs is very simple, so this post doesn't have much actual grammar - it's more of a "here's a cool fact that explains the grammar behind this!". However, it does show how Latin can explain many of the seemingly weird quirks that Spanish has. This is far from being the only way in which Latin has influenced Spanish, of course, but it's one of the most straightforward ones, certainly. Or, as the Romans would say, "with a certain mind". Heh
