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Das hört sich gut an (das Fest; nicht, dass du hier alleine feiern musst)

Here, "alleine" is used as an adverb, where I would have used "allein". I conducted a scientific investigation to gauge the popularity of the alternatives.

phrase            google hits
-----------------------------
allein   feiern      15 900
alleine  feiern      88 600

allein   gehen      139 000
alleine  gehen      322 000

schnell  gehen    4 340 000
schnelle gehen       17 600

"Alleine" as an adverb is more popular, but that pattern does not extend to other adjectives.

What is the difference between the adverbs "allein" and "alleine"? Are there more adjectives that follow this pattern?

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"allein" is the correct form of being alone. "alleine" is colloquial, though often used.

For reference you can look at this Duden entry.

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    It's hard to say that something is correct if the alternative is many times more popular :) Thanks, it never struck me to look up just "alleine" in a dictionary, since it's inclined.
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 28, 2011 at 19:40
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    You're right about that, but there still are the official rules and they say "alleine" is colloquial ;-)
    – Dennis G
    Commented Jun 28, 2011 at 20:44
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alleine is colloquial for allein. Maybe that's an explanation why there are more search engine results for the word "feiern" and less for "gehen".

The Ngram Viewer graph shows that the usage of alleine is increasing in publications though.

alleine vs allein

I think that your third example "schnelle gehen" is not a correct expression; schnell is the correct adjective or adverb. It could be that schnelle is used in some dialects.

There is at least one adverb that have both forms

  • gern / gerne
  • beinahe / beinah (colloquial)
  • lang / lange

(I'm still looking for other words)

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    Sorry splattne, I mixed the numbers for "allein gehen" and "alleine gehen" up. "alleine gehen" yields more hits, but Google wants to correct it to "allein gehen".
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 28, 2011 at 19:37
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    Since schnell obviously isn't one, do you know of other adjective/adverb pairs that have this kind of -e adverb ending in colloquial speech?
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 28, 2011 at 19:38

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