Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

The Russians had this figured out centuries ago with a robust grammar for diminutives [1] that can be applied to almost any noun. Meanwhile us poor english speakers are forced to create new words instead :(

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive

View on HN

The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation (especially when read online). It is interesting though that "doggo" is seen as a replacement. I thought "doggo" is most commonly used in references to dogs who are, in fact, lying doggo.

> The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation

What?

It's a very stylish diminutive.

I don't know what word you guys are talking about.

It took me a while but I believe they mean "doggy".

In what context is this risque?

Because of "doggy style"

Oh. Right. Silly me. Thanks for clearing that up.

Doggy? I'm a bit lost, too.

You Anglophones do have at least two diminutive suffixes: -ling and -let. They have neutral or slightly negative connotations, though.

"Dogling" or "doglet". Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Actually I love those! I might have to start calling my giant fat kitty a doglet.

>Dogling

It's like a zergling but a dog.

Not just Russian—all Slavic languages I'm aware of have this concept. There's also the opposite, an augmentative, which is a modified version of a noun that conveys stronger intensity.

Also Spanish: the -ito and -isimo suffixes magnify the intensity or size of an adjective or noun, respectively.

e.g. hermana is sister, hermanita is little sister.

> magnify the intensity or size of an adjective or noun, respectively

Not respectively.

How would you phrase it? I'm not quite sure how you can magnify the intensity of a noun or the size of an adjective.

I guess he understood (as I did) that you meant respectively to -ito and -ísimo, not to "intensity" and "size".

English doesn't have a single very common diminutive suffix like most European languages, but it actually does have very many derivational noun suffixes that correspond to diminutives or augmentatives in other languages and all have slightly different shades of meaning. Doggo, for example, has many friends:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-o#Suffix

German also has this, so it's quite curious that English doesn't.

From my limited knowledge, Esperanto uses -ido to mean "small"/"baby", so "hundo" is dog but "hundido" is "puppy".

-id- is offspring, -et- is the generic diminutive.

Italian as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com