めったに・ほとんど: They're "hardly" adverbs! (Adept Adverbs ➆)

Introduction

Another adverb lesson? Yes, that's right! It's your lucky day!

But don't worry, these aren't your typical adverbs. These are all... negative, and whatnot.

めったに～ない: I hardly ever eat pancakes (this is a lie)

構成こうせい

• 

  めったに～(ない verb)

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  ～はめったにない

  Example:
  → あの人ひとはめったに見みないな。
  "I hardly ever see that person.”

We'll kick things off with めったに～ない, a handy grammatical construction that is used to say that one "hardly does X", or "barely ever does Y", or even "rarely ever".

めったに ("rarely; seldom") derives from the な-adjective 「滅多めった」(literally "destroy" + "frequent") plus the に particle, and will pair with a negative verb 99% of the time, which is big enough of a percentage for me to say that we always need to pair めったに with a negative verb, haha.