Comment adverbs: "obviously" and "understandably"

Question

I'm doing an exercise on comment adverbs, and I got the wrong answer when I tried to connect "obviously" and "understandably" to their respective reason for using them.

Try it yourself first and please explain the reason for your guess.

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1. Obviously, ...
2. Understandably, ...

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• I think this is generally clear and accepted by people
• I think this idea makes sense.

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Answer 1

I would link Obviously with "I think this is generally clear and accepted by people" and Understandably with "I think this idea makes sense.".

The difference is subtle, but the way I see it is that understandably is less certain than obviously. Understandably implies that something is probably right, while Obviously is more certain, it implies that it is clear why or that everyone agrees about something.