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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

English has a few diminutive suffixes. Which one is used depends a lot on the shape of the word and the era, but the most common one today is -y.

So a child's toy might be Beary, and the kid might go by Johnny. We also have -ling, as in duckling, and a whole bunch of less common ones [0].

You're right, though, that we don't use our diminutives nearly as often as the Iberian languages do. If you tried to use them as much as you would in Portuguese you would definitely not sound like a native speaker, but they do exist.

Mostly they're used in the register of speech that we use when speaking to very young children (i.e. "baby talk"), in nicknames, or in older words that acquired a diminutive a long time ago and now register as just a word on their own.

[0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_diminutive...

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-ette is still productive but collides with the female sense

-kins (I've only heard it with an s) is arguably still productive, but in very limited contexts - unlike other diminutives, it seems to only be used when an actual small baby is involved, not for mere endearment, though in this context it can be used either for the baby or for the people around the baby.

-let is still productive (applet = small app; even Aplet = candied apple is only documented a century back); only takes ordinary nouns.

-ling feels still productive, but new archetypes are rare so it's mostly used with preexisting words.

-ole and variants might be productive in science but are otherwise not even recognized.

-poo is apparently productive but not something I ever reach for

-ses I'm not convinced is actually correctly analyzed; it appears to just be a redundant plural, similar to how "bestest" is a redundant superlative

-sies is actually just -s (diminutive/filler) + -ie/-y (diminutive) + -s (plural). Usually the first -s is required for a word that ends with a vowel (but also after n (including nd/nt with the d/t weakened), m, ng, r, l, p, or b; the need for disambiguation is also relevant)

But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix though (such as with the meaning of -ish).

Influence from Romance languages is strong enough that foreign diminutives are now more common than some of the traditional English diminutives.

> But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix though (such as with the meaning of -ish).

I think the -y meaning of ish is very closely related to if not identical to the diminutive use.

-o is most characteristic of Australian English but English speakers over the world are familiar with "kiddo", "psycho", and now "doggo".

My own kiddo, at the age of two or three, decided that -o was a productive suffix and started calling me and her mother "Daddo" and "Mommo".

I don't think that's actually a diminutive (meaning shifts to add smallness or endearment), just a colloquializer (meaning doesn't change, just becomes less formal; dialects may adopt a particular informal word as standard).

not sure psycho counts, as it works in every language that uses the greek? latin? base.

Also I kinda liked learning about smoko, even as a non-smoker.

-een is there but probably more common in Ireland/Scotland than in other places.

Another example: "kiddie pool".

Also, I'll often refer to my child as "kidling" or "childling". English can be a fun language to play in.

One of my favorite jokes relies on this.

Q: Where does a general keep his armies?

A: In his sleevies!

And "-let" like in eyelet, bracelet, rivulet, etc.

'-let' is pretty common as well. (Applet, hamlet and so on)

I think the most common diminutive in English preceding the word with the word "little". This is not a suffix but is used in much the same ways as diminutive suffixes are used in other latin languages.

"little bear" and "little johnny" would both be quite natural phrases.

The most common one might be the diminutive for a pot - potty. Potling or potlet would have been much better in my opinion.

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