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According to the materials I possess or can find on the Internet, Georgian adverbs derived from nouns end in -ად (-ad) (unless the noun in the nominative ends in -ო (-o) or -უ (-u), in which case the adverb will end in -ოდ (-od) or -უდ (-ud), respectively.

This is in fact the adverbial case of the noun. Adjectives also have an adverbial case which is just the bare stem without an ending.

However I've just come across the word მწარედ (mtsared) "bitterly" which is related to the word მწარე (mtsare) "bitter". As you can see it ends in -ედ (-ed).

Is this just an irregular inflection peculiar to this word, or is there a regular adjective → adverb process that I just haven't been able to find?

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-ედ (or perhaps we should just say -დ) is the normal adverbial ending for noun or adjective stems ending in ე. So you have the following forms:

  • consonant stems

    • წიგნ-ი > წიგნ-ად

  • vowel stems

    • დედა > დედა-დ
    • მეპურე > მეპურე-დ
    • გოგო > გოგო-დ
    • ყრუ > ყრუ-დ
    • here should also be included the rare i stem nouns such as the example Tschenkeli gives: ტრამვაი > ტრამვაი-დ (although I think that most of these have a tendency to be declined like consonant stems in the contemporary language).

Adverbial forms such as ჩქარა and ნელა are exceptional and can be interpreted as having lost the final დ as per ჩქარ-ი > *ჩქარ-ად > ჩქარ-ა, ნელ-ი > *ნელ-ად > ნელ-ა. Most adjectives form their adverbial as would be expected, e.g. კარგ-ი > კარგ-ად. However, it must be borne in mind that the above only applies when the adjective is not modifying a noun in the adverbial, i.e. when it is being used as an adverb in its own right. If the adjective is modifying a noun, then it will take no ending, as you say. Compare კარგ სტუდენტად (as a good student) with კარგად წერს (he writes well).

Hope this helps!

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  • Hmm this doesn't match what I could find. Specifically Beginner's Georgian by Dodona Kiziria, which gives examples such as მეფე > მეფეად. Or is this something that differs between noun declension and adjective declension? I couldn't find anything specifically on declining adjectives that end in ე in the lemma (nominative). (But I can't check now as all my Georgian books are in storage as I commence another trip around the world.)
    – hippietrail
    Aug 1, 2013 at 15:11
  • I am not qualified to dispute what Dodona Kiziria says; however, "მეფეად" is intriguing as all the sources that I have at my disposal, including one book co-authored by Dodona Kiziria, but not Beginner's Georgian, seem quite adamant that the form should be "მეფედ". Indeed, searching for "მეფეად" (in inverted commas) on Google only yields one result, while "მეფედ" and "მეფად" yield 69,500 and 402 results respectively. I'm inclined to think that "მეფეად" might be a typo, but I am not a native speaker and I have not checked with a native speaker, so take all the above with a pinch of salt!
    – A Parmar
    Aug 2, 2013 at 16:27
  • Hmm I must be wrong about მეფეად then but I did check for this question but obviously haven't remembered exactly what I checked. It must've been მეფად. I'm sorry I don't have my materials handy any more )-:
    – hippietrail
    Aug 2, 2013 at 16:37

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