# Diminutivos - hola holita



## Love_MJ

Como son los diminutivos en inglés, es decir, por ejemplo Flanders que dice:

Hola holita... como sería esto en inglés? Es por poner un ejemplo...
Muchísimas gracias de antemano.


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## Txiri

"Hi, hello"

It´s not really the same in English, though, at least not this example.

To take another example, "solo, solito", would be alone, all alone

Muchacha, muchachita, would be girl, little girl (or girlie, but THAT one you have to be careful with ...)

libro, librito:  book, little book, or booklet

casa, casita:  house, little house, or cottage ...

It really depends on whether there´s a natural-sounding diminutive already in the language, with the impact and emotional affect of the diminutive -ito, -cito, etc.  And also, whether or not some irony is intended.


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## Love_MJ

wow !!.... Thank you very much !!


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## Danim74

Love MJ, 
lo que Flanders dice en inglés es "Hi-dilly-ho-dilly neighboreenos!" que no es un diminutivo sino que refiere más al tono "fastidioso" con el que habla.
 
Hasta luegito...


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## tigger_uhuhu

*Hola, Love MJ. Bienvenid@ a WR.*
*Notarás que he cambiado el título de tu hilo (me gustaría saber) por uno que está más relacionado con tu duda. *
*Esto nos ayuda a poder encontrar ayuda cuando alguien tiene la misma duda, o una parecida, usando la opción "busqueda" en los foros.*
*También para poder diferenciar e identificar cada pregunta.*
*Sé que contamos con tu apoyo para que en tus próximas preguntas incorpores un título relacionado con ellas.*
*De cualquier modo, te sugiero leer las reglas de WR, son sencillas y nos ayudan mucho a todos. **Aquí** puedes leerlas.*
*Saludos y gracias.*
*Tigger*


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## Edwin

otros ejemplos robados de Wikipedia

underwear: undies
moving picture: movie
dear: dearie
dog: doggy
cat: kitty
???: cookie
duck: duckling
disk: diskette
cigar: cigarette
kitchen: kitchenette
pig: piglet
eye: eyelet
fat: chubby

Y como ya se han dicho se puede convertir a veces un sustantivo a algo equivalente al diminutivo español por  poner *little* o *nice little* antes de ello.  Pero depende del contexto cuando se puede hacerlo.

Ejemplo:

That's a nice little car you have there.


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## skatoulitsa

La verdad es que los diminutivos no existen naturalmente en inglés.


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## Txiri

skatoulitsa said:
			
		

> La verdad es que los diminutivos no existen naturalmente en inglés.


 
Curioso comentario, ¿puedes explicarlo?


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## i heart queso

Es que no hay un sistema de diminutivos en inglés como lo que existe en español, como pueden ver con los ejemplos de Edwin.  
I think many times the diminutive in Spanish conveys a tone rather than actually making the nouns literally smaller (if that makes sense) and in English we have other ways of conveying the same thing, rather than adding something like "ito" to a noun.


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## skatoulitsa

Exactamente.
Hay algunos diminutivos específicos en inglés, como "doggy" y "kitty", pero no hay reglas para formarlos en general.


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## Edwin

i heart queso said:
			
		

> I think many times the diminutive in Spanish conveys a tone rather than actually making the nouns literally smaller (if that makes sense) and in English we have other ways of conveying the same thing, rather than adding something like "ito" to a noun.



Sí, un amigo mexicano me dijo que "gordita" o "gordito" es más or menos lo mismo que "chubby" y por eso no es tan duro como "fatty". Y puede tener un sentido de cariño. 

O ¿quizás "casita" sería "cute little house"?


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## tafanari

> ???: cookie



*Cookie* viene de *koekje*. Es el diminutivo del holandés *koek*(*cake*).


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## Txiri

It´s common for us in English to speak of diminutives of names ... Bobby for Robert, Ted for Edward, Bill for William ... Peggy for Margaret ...  on the face of it, many of these diminutives do not look like the longer more formal name ... but they are diminutives, nonetheless.

If I were asked to identify what a diminutive is, I would describeits a) form, and b) function.  

The form of the names above in many cases undergo some significant changes in letters to make their diminutives.  On the other hand, there are many names whose diminutives are formed by adding the suffix -y to the name:  Susan, Susie;  Joseph, Joey;  Thomas, Tommy ...

Certainly many common nouns also make use of this feature:  doggy and kitty are two prime examples, you´ll also find English speaking children doing the same with wolfie, ducky, itsy bitsy, mommy and daddy ...

Ask any English speaker which one is smaller, tiny or teeny, and they will with almost one hundred percent likellihood, say "teeny".

I suggest for your consideration that the sound /ee/ represents diminutiveness in English.

As to its function, a doggy or a Tommy or something itsy bitsy is understood to be smaller than its "norm".  Part and parcel of the smallness includes often the addition of the endearing quality, mothers and fathers call a wolf a wolfie to make it less scary, to make it smaller, to humanize it ... and children certainly capture the intent.

It may be that English does not have a variety of suffixes that transform a noun into a diminutive variant, but I think the basic approaches between English and Spanish are the same (including in terms of the /ee/ sound).

English has a wide variety of expressive syntagms at its disposal, and so does Spanish.  I´m hard put after studying and comparing both languages for over 35 years now, to think of one type of expression that can be made in one language, and not the other ...  so I don´t subscribe to the opinion that English doesn´t have diminutives ... the forms they make take, may not always match up, the way French and Spanish or Italian might, but the expressive capability is still always there (in my opinion)


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## skatoulitsa

I agree that expressive capability exists in both languages. Actually I believe that you can express almost everything in any language. The difference for me however is efficiency and compactness, which although doesn't affect the expressive capability overall -- you can always use bigger and wordier descriptions to convey what you're talking about -- it still makes a difference. And I am by no means saying that spanish is in general more compact or efficient than english, because i think it's not. It's just that I believe that in this particular aspect it has a "tool" that doesn't exist in english in the same compact and general form.
So, I don't think that the debate is whether or not there is some way to translate "casita", or any other word for that matter, in english, but whether or not there exists in english a rule for constructing diminutives, like there is in spanish.


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## Edwin

Support for Skatoulitsa's point can be found in this link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive. It says in part: 


> In many languages formation of diminutives by suffixes is a regular part of grammar. All nouns, not just proper nouns can be diminuted. The word "diminutive" is used in a narrower and less vague sense here than when referring to English. The basic meaning of diminution in these languages is "smallness of the object named"; endearment, intimacy etc. is secondary and dependent on context.


The link also include descriptions of how diminutives are formed in several languages. Unfortunately it skips Modern Greek.  

It is also unfortunate that English unlike Spanish and some other languages doesn't have the augumentative.


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## nohablo

Edwin said:
			
		

> It is also unfortunate that English unlike Spanish and some other languages doesn't have the augumentative.


But the Wikipedia discussion you cite includes mention of the German augumentatives -er and -est, and these are also very common in English.  E.g., small, smaller, smallest; large, larger, largest; happy, happier, happiest.


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## Edwin

nohablo said:
			
		

> But the Wikipedia discussion you cite includes mention of the German augumentatives -er and -est, and these are also very common in English.  E.g., small, smaller, smallest; large, larger, largest; happy, happier, happiest.



I call happier and  happiest the comparative and superlative forms of the adjective happy. I don't think of these as augmentatives. That German comment at Wikipedia might be mistaken? 

I think of augmentatives as things like

mujerona (big and/or tough woman), 
arbolote (big tree), 
perrazo (a big and/or mean dog), 
librazo or librote (big book), 
pajarote (large bird), 
casona (large house), 
cabezón (big-headed, 
big-headed person, literally or figuratively), 
cabezota (stubborn, stubborn person).

Source:


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## nohablo

Edwin said:
			
		

> I call happier and  happiest the comparative and superlative forms of the adjective happy. I don't think of these as augmentatives. That German comment at Wikipedia might be mistaken?


Yes, I agree with you.  Since I don't normally use the term "augmentatives," I was merely going by what the Wikipedia entry said.  Wikipedia, of course, is at times mistaken; indeed, there have been numerous articles and blog entries recently that have called attention to some of Wikipedia's inaccuracies.


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## skatoulitsa

Hi Edwin,
Thanks for the link.



			
				Edwin said:
			
		

> The link also include descriptions of how diminutives are formed in several languages. Unfortunately it skips Modern Greek.



hehe, I can't believe it has Esperanto... 

Anyways, greek is more complicated than spanish, but the general diminutive suffixes are:

-άκι/-ούτσικο (neutral sex) e.g. τραπεζάκι, μεγαλούτσικο
-άκης/-άκος/-ούλης/-ούτσικος (male) e.g. σκυλάκος, κοντούλης, μεγαλούτσικος
-ίτσα/-ούλα/-ούτσικια (female) e.g. καρεκλίτσα, γατούλα, μικρούτσικια

Not all of them go with any word though, but I have no idea if there are some kind of rules about which go. But any word can take one.
What I mean is that you can say κοντούλης (=shorty), but you can't say κοντάκος.

Augmentatives are simpler, by adding -άρος/-άρα.


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## Edwin

Hola Skatoulitsa,

Tu nombre me parece un diminutivo. Mi esposa es griega-americana y puede hablar griego un poco. Le pregunté qué significa "Skatoulitsa".  No voy a decirte que me dijo porque ella no está segura. Favor de iluminarnos.

--Edwin


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## skatoulitsa

jeje, sí es un diminutivo.
Literalmente se significa "caca pequeña" (¿cómo decimos esto con diminutivo?), pero utilizamos a veces esta palabra ("σκατούλα"/"σκατουλίτσα") para decir "algo pequeño". Sin embargo, esto es muy coloquial.

Είναι μια σκατούλα = Es muy pequeño


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## ieracub

Hola:

El diminutivo sería _caquita  _

Entonces, de ahí vienen _escatología, escatológico._

Saludos.


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## PSIONMAN

skatoulitsa said:
			
		

> I believe that you can express almost everything in any language.



This is an interesting comment skatoulitsa

Can you give an example of something that can be expressed in one language but *cannot* be expressed in another?


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## skatoulitsa

ieracub said:
			
		

> Entonces, de ahí vienen _escatología, escatológico._



Jejeje... Sí es correcto.



			
				PSIONMAN said:
			
		

> This is an interesting comment skatoulitsa
> 
> Can you give an example of something that can be expressed in one language but *cannot* be expressed in another?



Well, I was thinking that many things can be hard or even impossible to translate from one language to another for two possible reasons:
1. It can be an object that does not physically exist in the other country and therefore people don't have a word for it, and if they become familiar with the object they usually adopt the foreign word. This is quite frequent with food. For example in Greece we don't have hash browns, and myself before going to the US I had no idea what they where. And now the only way I could explain it to someone would be to try to describe what it looks like. But still if I just want to tell my friend in greek: "I had hash browns for breakfast", I will have a big trouble doing so.
2. It can be a meaning that is very involved in a country's culture, that just doesn't occur in the other, for which any description can be very unsatisfying. There are many things in greek that I can't fully express in english, so I'm not sure if I can give an example that can make sense, but in another thread someone was asking about a translation of a song's lyrics and some of the words were really impossible to express. You can say something that comes kinda close, but it's never good enough. Maybe some other greek speaker could help me here: I was thinking of words like "πενιές" and "λεβέντες".

I will try to think of an example between english and spanish which would probably make more sense to everyone.


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## jivemu

PSIONMAN said:
			
		

> Can you give an example of something that can be expressed in one language but *cannot* be expressed in another?


For example, many names of dishes or food, which we have to use in their original language: pizza, paella, sushi, bagel...  we just can explain their recipes and how they look/taste like.

EDIT: thanks, sound shift.


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## sound shift

Hello jivemu,

May a give you a little advice?

How they look 
How they taste 
How they look like 
How they taste like 
What they look like 
What they taste like 

Saludos


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## Edwin

skatoulitsa said:
			
		

> jeje, sí es un diminutivo.
> Literalmente se significa "caca pequeña" (¿cómo decimos esto con diminutivo?), pero utilizamos a veces esta palabra ("σκατούλα"/"σκατουλίτσα") para decir "algo pequeño". Sin embargo, esto es muy coloquial.
> 
> Είναι μια σκατούλα = Es muy pequeño



Gracias, σκατουλίτσα, por la aclaración. Es exactamente lo que me dijo mi esposa pero no podíamos creer que alguien usaría tal nombre. Ella no conoce el uso de σκατούλα para decir pequeño. A propósito, te apuesto que los mods nunca van a permitir que alguien use el nombre "little shit" en estos foros.   Tampoco "caca pequeña".


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## PSIONMAN

skatoulitsa said:
			
		

> Jejeje... Sí es correcto.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I was thinking that many things can be hard or even impossible to translate from one language to another for two possible reasons:
> 1. It can be an object that does not physically exist in the other country and therefore people don't have a word for it, and if they become familiar with the object they usually adopt the foreign word. This is quite frequent with food. For example in Greece we don't have hash browns, and myself before going to the US I had no idea what they where. And now the only way I could explain it to someone would be to try to describe what it looks like. But still if I just want to tell my friend in greek: "I had hash browns for breakfast", I will have a big trouble doing so.
> 2. It can be a meaning that is very involved in a country's culture, that just doesn't occur in the other, for which any description can be very unsatisfying. There are many things in greek that I can't fully express in english, so I'm not sure if I can give an example that can make sense, but in another thread someone was asking about a translation of a song's lyrics and some of the words were really impossible to express. You can say something that comes kinda close, but it's never good enough. Maybe some other greek speaker could help me here: I was thinking of words like "πενιές" and "λεβέντες".
> 
> I will try to think of an example between english and spanish which would probably make more sense to everyone.


I do know what you mean, and there are cultural influences in everything we say and mean. I am Welsh and we think that only the Welsh can understand the term "Hiraeth"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/capturewales/background/val-bethell.shtml

But only a moment's reflection is enough to convince you that the problem is not linguistic - it is to do with background , learnung, culture. You cannot describe "green" to a blind man, but in some cultures they only have 3 words for the different colurs - they could be taught the seven that we conventionaly used. I'm sure its the same with any concept, I might not have a word for it, but I can understand it and eventually express it

I remember my Spanish teacher telling me that the English word for "matices" is "nuances"


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## nohablo

PSIONMAN said:
			
		

> I remember my Spanish teacher telling me that the English word for "matices" is "nuances"


I'm just learning Spanish, so please excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure what's funny about what your Spanish teacher said.  When I've come upon the word matiz and looked it up, the definition that seemed to fit best was indeed "nuance."  Now that you've seemed to call this into question, I've looked in three Spanish/English dictionaries, and all three give "nuance" as one of the meanings of matiz.  There's even a thread about this on this forum: 
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=60214 .  I'd really love to know why you seem to regard what your Spanish teacher said as funny or somehow wrong.


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## PSIONMAN

nohablo said:
			
		

> I'd really love to know why you seem to regard what your Spanish teacher said as funny or somehow wrong.



Sorry Nohablo. In the context of this thread it struck me as funny that she gave a French word as the English translation - we have no word for the concept in English - the nearest we can get is "shades of meaning"


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## skatoulitsa

PSIONMAN said:
			
		

> But only a moment's reflection is enough to convince you that the problem is not linguistic - it is to do with background , learnung, culture.


I completely agree that it is not an inherent linguistic problem, but background and culture affect the language greatly. So, it's not that a language is less "equiped" in expressivity than another, but inevitably differences in culture make it difficult to express everything from one language to the other.

I went to Puerto Rico and they were using in all their recipes many different kinds of bananas and plantains, and I couldn't tell the difference, because in Greece we don't have this kind of distinctions. We only have bananas, all bananas look the same to us, and everything is just bananas.

What you say about understanding something and eventually being able to express it, is true, and is the ability of the people and consequently of the language to adapt in response to outside influences.
But before these actually become common part of the language, we inevitably have trouble expressing ourselves.
It is not always about _understanding _the meaning of a word, but also being able to efficiently express it. If I am talking to a friend and I want to tell him "I had hash browns for breakfast", I can describe it and make him understand what it was that I had -- I'm not saying that speaking greek would make us incapable of understanding what hash browns look like, or how they are cooked, or even describe what they taste like. But if I was given this as a piece of text to translate, I wouldn't know how to do it.
And this is what I mean when I say that you can't always express everything in another language.


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## nohablo

PSIONMAN said:
			
		

> Sorry Nohablo. In the context of this thread it struck me as funny that she gave a French word as the English translation - we have no word for the concept in English - the nearest we can get is "shades of meaning"


Muchas gracias, Psionman, for the explanation.  I guess I'm so used to hearing and seeing the word "nuance" in English that I don't even think of it as a French word.  Sort of like "petite," "encore," and "hors d'oeuvre."  Or "plaza" and "mosquito" from the Spanish.  Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to explain.


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## PSIONMAN

mhp said:
			
		

> Same for me. I don’t consider “nuance” to be any more French than, say, “resign”, “power”, “soup” and thousands of other words that include French in their etymology.



I agree mhp. It's now a fully fledged borrowed word (but a fairly recent one *1781* H. WALPOLE _Let. to C'tess Ossory_ 4 Jan., The more expert one were at nuances, the more poetic one should be. - OED). 

It was just strange to hear a Spaniard, speaking in Spanish, saying the the English for matiz was nuance. She said it with a French accent too!


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