Diminutives!

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Diminutives!

• Sp.3 H
• c.12

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What are diminutives?

• Diminutives are suffixes that are added to nouns,
  adjectives, adverbs, and even names in order to
  express smallness in size, affection, humor,
  pity, irony, or ridicule.
• With diminutives, you can say something is little
  without actually using the adjective little.

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What are the endings?

• -ito -cito -ecito
• -illo -cillo -ecillo

Remember Diminutives change to match the gender
and number of the word they modify!
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The Rules

• For most words, including those that end in any
  vowel other than E, drop the final vowel and add
  -ito or -illo
• Hermanohermanito (little brother)
• Rosarosita (little rose)
• Perroperrito (puppy)

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Continued

• 2. Words with more than one syllable that end in
  E, N, R, or a stressed vowel (In their masculine
  forms) take -cito or -cillo
• Pintorpintorcito (third-rate painter)
• Mamámamacita (mommy)
• Pobrepobrecito (poor little thing)

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Continued

• 3. Words with one syllable that end in a
  consonant take -ecito or -ecillo
• Panpanecillo (roll)
• Florflorecilla (little flower)

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Spelling Changes

• Dont forget the orthographic spelling changes!
• Chicachiquita/chiquilla (little girl)
• DiegoDieguito
• Amigoamiguito

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Expressing Ridicule

• -illo or ecillo is sometimes used to express
  ridicule
• No me gustan las obras de ese pintorcillo.
• I dont like the works of that (would be)
  painter.
• Qué coquetilla!
• What a little flirt!