In English, "really bad" is heard most frequently. In fact, I would avoid using "really badly", because your act of wanting it is not evil. "Really bad" is just an idiomatic expression, and adding the "-ly" just to make it fit syntactical rules implies that the idiom can be broken down into its constituent parts.

jchthys:In English, "really bad" is heard most frequently. In fact, I would avoid using "really badly", because your act of wanting it is not evil. "Really bad" is just an idiomatic expression, and adding the "-ly" just to make it fit syntactical rules implies that the idiom can be broken down into its constituent parts.

"badly" isn't evil. This is the Oxford definition:

1 in an unsatisfactory, inadequate, or unsuccessful way:
a badly managed company
the war was going badly
in an unfavorable way:
try not to think badly of me
in an unacceptable or unpleasant way:
she realized she was behaving rather badly
2 to a great or serious degree; severely:
the building was badly damaged by fire
I wanted a baby so badly
things had begun to go badly wrong

"really bad" isn't an idiom. It's just "badly" modified by "really". I could replace "really" with "very" and that doesn't make "very badly" an idiom.

OK, I guess what I mean is that "bad" is used idiomatically, not in its ordinary sense. You're not literally wanting something in a bad way, you just "want it bad". I'd say that in this special meaning "bad" is an adverb.

Looking at my dictionary (the New Oxford American Dictionary on my Mac) I see "bad" listed as an adverb (with the informal tag) meaning the same thing as "badly". I personally feel that it's a little over-conservative (dictionaries always are; it's not necessarily a bad thing) and that "bad" is actually now the primary usage. But I may be wrong.

To my ear, saying "really bad" sounds not just slangy but also uneducated. Obviously I'm referring to the adverbial sense; the adjectival sense of "That movie is really bad" would be correct and I'd say that.

But adverbially I can't imagine myself saying it, especially not in a professional situation.

Maybe I'm pedantic. The Applebee's restaurant slogan ("Eating good in the neighborhood") has always grated on my ear. "Eating well!", I think, every time I see it. "Could you truly not think of a grammatical slogan, even if you wanted it to rhyme?"

darkweasel:

omid17:What does this thread have to do with Esperanto ?

Nothing, but general linguistics threads have usually been tolerated here.

Dude, this is a question on English grammar. General linguistics?!

There are two excellent places for such questions:

http://www.englishforums.com
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/

It might sound hypocritical of me to say this, as I have used the private messaging system to ask my English questions from users who speak English natively (and were willing to help). I think that is clearly different from creating new threads.

Maybe in the new website we could have a place where grammar questions written in languages other than Esperanto and about languages other than Esperanto are allowed? I don't know, It is way irrelevant to Esperanto and the goals of this website but could add to the number of visitors.

Obviously I'd have no objection if the whole discussion was conducted in Esperanto in another part of the website.

jchthys:Looking at my dictionary (the New Oxford American Dictionary on my Mac) I see "bad" listed as an adverb (with the informal tag) meaning the same thing as "badly". I personally feel that it's a little over-conservative (dictionaries always are; it's not necessarily a bad thing) and that "bad" is actually now the primary usage. But I may be wrong.

Informal doesn't always mean least used; it just means that you wouldn't want to use it in a formal paper, setting, etc.