Adverbs in Dutch are generally uninflected — they do not change form. Many adverbs look identical to their adjective counterparts: snel can be a fast adjective or a quickly adverb. Adjectives before nouns are inflected (een snelle auto) but the adverb is not: hij rijdt snel. This makes adverb identification straightforward — if the word modifies a verb, adjective or adverb rather than a noun, it is functioning as an adverb.
Dutch follows a general ordering principle for adverbs in the middle field — the space between the finite verb and the end of the clause: time adverbs come before manner adverbs, which come before place adverbs. This is often summarised as Temporal-Manner-Place or TMP: Ik ga morgen snel naar Amsterdam. However, this order is flexible for emphasis, and native speakers shift adverbs for stylistic reasons. Placing a time adverb first in the whole sentence triggers inversion: Morgen ga ik snel naar Amsterdam.
Degree adverbs — heel (very), erg (very or awfully), nogal (quite), tamelijk (fairly), vrij (fairly), echt (really) — precede the adjective or adverb they modify: een heel mooi schilderij, ze rijdt vrij snel. Sentence adverbs expressing attitude — misschien (perhaps), waarschijnlijk (probably), helaas (unfortunately), gelukkig (fortunately) — typically appear early in the sentence and can trigger inversion: Helaas kon hij niet komen.