I thought how to write adverbs in Hanyu Pinyin (1.1 MB PDF) would be the logical follow-up to last week’s posting of the rules for verbs.

Most of these are pretty straightforward, so I won’t discuss much here.

One note: Although reduplicated verbs lose the tone on their second syllable, reduplicated adverbs do not:

• g?ngg?ng ?? (just now)
• j?nj?n ?? (only; merely)
• chángcháng ?? (often)
• sh?osh?o ?? (a bit; slightly)

Here are some of the adverbs for which examples are given:

• d?u ? (all)
• zh? ? (only)
• zuì ? (most, -est)
• gèng ? (even more), b?jiào ??/?? (relatively)
• h?n ? (very), tài ? (extremely; too)
• g?ng ?/? (just now), y?jing ??/?? (already), céngjing ??/?? (in the past)
• jiù ? (then), ji?ng ?/? (in the near future)
• cái ? (finally)
• hái ?/?
• yòu ? (again; too)
• zài ? (again)
• y? ? (also, too)

As always, I recommend this to not just those interested in Pinyin orthography but also to those learning Mandarin (esp. those who are at least at the intermediate level).