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What I understand about an "adverb" is that it modifies a verb. E.g. in 遅く走ります, 遅く is an adverb because it modifies the verb 走ります. It "describes" how I run (slowly).

Now back to 皆...

One example of how it is used as an adverb is お茶を皆飲みます. Sure, 皆 appears just before 飲みます, but I don't really understand its function as an adverb. As in, I can't see how it (皆) modifies the verb. To me, it appears more like it is describing how much of the tea I drink, much like the function of 全部 in 全部のお茶を飲みます. It's unlike the use of, say, 速く in お茶を速く飲みます. In this case, the adverb 速く does describe the verb/action of drinking the tea (quickly).

What am I not understanding correctly?

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It might be easier to understand みんな as an adverb in a sentence like the following:

私たちはみんな、お茶を飲んだ。 We all drank tea.

The core sentence here is just 私たちはお茶を飲んだ, "We drank tea." How did they drink tea? "We drank tea, all of us." = "We all drank tea."

I agree that it feels a little different from the 速く from 速く走る, but in that it describes how the verb is carried out, it is indeed functioning as an adverb.

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  • Is the sentence still grammatically valid if written as "みんなで?" So, 私たちはみんなで、お茶を飲んだ。 If so, does any meaning or nuance also change?
    – hulapoll1
    Commented Jul 24 at 22:57
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    @hulapoll1 Yes, that is also a grammatically correct sentence, but the meaning is slightly different. When you mark a group with で, it means the action is done in that group. So with みんなで, everyone drinks tea all together. You could change it to 二人で, for example, and now the speaker is drinking tea "in a group of two," or in other words, together with one other person. In contrast, with 私たちはみんな、お茶を飲んだ, everyone drinks tea, but there's no guarantee that they drank it together. (They might have, but the sentence isn't saying that.)
    – どっかのおっさん
    Commented Jul 25 at 23:21

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