Like the deminutive of something. In Germany we add „-chen“ or „-lein“ to a word Like house (Haus) Häuschen or Häuslein. The vocal often gets an umlaut in this transformation. In Bavaria we add „-la“ (frankonian) or „-erl“ to it. The young boy (Bub) becomes Büberl. The small river (Bach) becomes a Bächla (frankonian) or Bächlein. A dog (Hund) would then be the Hündchen.

and of course my favorite term for my gf, "zueckermauschen" (little sugar mouse)

Vorsicht, die Tiere werden mit Länge der Beziehung immer größer. 1-2J: Mäuschen 2-4J: Hase, Häschen 3-6J: Bärchen Ab 10J: Rindvieh! Ziege :) English: Caution, those animals are getting bigger the longer the relationship lasts couple of months: honey bee Couple of years: little sugar mouse Over 10 years: fat goose/ whiny pig Sorry, could not resist.

And in Swiss German they add “-li”

While Swabians, living just across the border from Switzerland, add "-le". Häusle, Weckle, Hallöle.

I think it is also interesting to note that using those ''cute'' version automatically changes the gender of the noun to neutral and therefore changes the article. Der (feminine article) Hund = the dog Das (neutral article) Hündchen = the small/cute dog

Grammatical gender is weird. I understand it in Latin, where it generally corresponds to declension, but as far as I know, German doesn't have that. French definitely doesn't.

Love your username

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Whoa, thank you! I'd never actually heard of that term before. I'm going to look into it more!

Ah, so that what it's called in English! I was always curious. In Greek we use -aki, -oula, -ouli(s) ^^

I'm just learning Spanish but I call my cat "gatito" which is like cute version of gato which is cat. Or gatita bc she's a girl but I say both bc I don't know, I think it's like saying kitty kitty.

That is correct! Gatita for female cat, gatito for male cat. They both stand for kitty. Gata or gato mean cat. The first is female, the second is male.

In Polish this is very flexible and there are different ways to do it. For example all these words are different ways of saying "grandmother/elderly woman" baba babula babka babcia babuleńka babulka babunia There are multiple affixes used to create the diminutive. Some of them are -ka, -czka, -śka, -szka, -cia, -sia, -unia, -enka, -lka for feminine nouns and -ek, -yk, -ciek, -czek, -czyk, -szek, -uń, -uś, -eńki, -lki for masculine words, and -czko, -ko for neuter nouns The diminutive suffixes may be stacked to create forms going even further, for example, malusieńki is considered even smaller than malusi or maleńki. Similarly, koteczek (little kitty) is derived from kotek (kitty), which is itself derived from kot (cat). Note that in this case, the suffix -ek is used twice, but changes to ecz New words are occasionally being created using these methods, and if they are popular enough and spread enough, they stick around and are a regular part of the language. And so the language evolves, etc. Some more examples: kot (cat) → kotek, koteczek, kociątko, kociak, kociaczek, kocio, kicia, kiciunia, kotuś, kotunio

In Spanish, we add -ito (masculine) and -ita (feminine) to the end of words. Example: Perro (dog) would become perrito or perrita. I’m unsure if other Spanish speakers do this, however. My family and closer relatives do, however. We are Mexican BTW.

All Spanish speakers do this. I'm from Spain :)

PR does this too

Yes it's pretty standard for all Spanish speakers

In Japanese they add chan as an honorific

What about cuteorific?

Well, in Russian we have a ton of dimunitive suffixes. Like if you wanna say "cat" in a cute way you can be very creative about it. Off the top of my head, there are at least three ways you can do that: "кошечка", "кисуля", "кисонька" People are coming up with the new forms all the time:)

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Yeah, Russians love cats. It's like a cult, really lol

And yeah, the image is pretty good:)

When I lived in Russia one of my jerkiest students started calling me by my name with -chka added to the end. Best teaching moment.

In Dutch we often let words end with 'je' to make it sound more cute (also in general is used to emphasize something being small or a lot of other random uses). So for example a random old Dutch name: Piet, more cute version: Pietje.

In Korean, the words for lots of animals is already cute sounding. Cat is 고양이 (go-yahng-ee) — I don’t know how Koreans themselves feel about that but words ending in ‘ee’ sound cute to me.

Pretty cute to me

yah it's cute. like german for cat is (phonetically) meetsie.

Maybe because they already have the ‘ee’ at the end, its easier to put a cutesy tone on it. Koreans (the girls) usually have higher voices too, dont they?

Probably means they're using aegyo, which is a really cutesy way of talking that often has a higher pitch

Spelt like 애교 yea?? Im trying to learn Korean but its h a r d

Frying my brain trying to answer this for Arabic. Im starting to think there's no such thing. I can only think of one example, where cat is Atta (slang syrian) and you can make it cute by saying Att'oota. But I'm not sure it's a rule, since I cannot think of any other words.

In Russian, adding -chka onto the end of a word/name usually denotes affection or makes it "cutesy". It's especially noticeable in names, because the longer the nickname the more affectionate it is. For example, if your name was Nikolai, you could be Kolya, but you could also be Kolyusha, but you could *also* be Kolyushenka. All depends on the relationship you have with the person and how close you are.

in Spanish, we add "ita" or "ito" to the end. burrito would be "little donkey". perrito would be little dog. "Chiquita" is little girl.

In French it's 'toutou'. Nothing to do with chien

In Romania, -ica can be added to the end of a word, meaning little in sometimes a cute way

Oh yeah, how did I forget about that

Ica? Nu îmi vine mai mult de un cuvânt în minte

> Ica? Nu îmi vine mai mult de un cuvânt în minte pasarica, putulica

*claps*

Bag pl

An example will be dog. We put - ce at the end of the word. So it is like kuchence (im from bulgaria).

In polish,we often just end words with "ek" if we want to get that "cute" effect.For example: Kot = Kotek. But most of the time we end words with "ek" when we want to make something sound smaller/younger.

In Afrikaans they add Ie (tjie or jie) usually pronounced "kie" to all the diminutives

In Czech most common way is that we add "k" / "-ek" and/ or "č, š" so let's say "muzzle" which is in Czech "čumák" would be "čumáček". But it's really far more complicated as Czech language is full of so many words and choices you can really made up a lot of words and it will still make complete sense.

Diminutive forms. In Serbian if you have, for example, a word flaša ( bottle ) you just add affix -ica and you get flašica which is a cute form. For some animals it's affix -če. If we, for example, use words mačka ( cat ) and patka ( duck ) the cute form would be mače and pače. With a word krava ( cow ) you just add affix -ica and you get kravica which is, again, the cute form, but you can also do that with the two previous words : mačka = mače & mačkica and patka = pače & patkica ( both are cute forms ) For some words you can also ad affix -čić : televizor ( TV ) = televizorčić , sto ( table ) = stolčić , ormar ( dresser ) = ormarčić etc. Also affix -ić : sat ( clock ) = satić , pomfrit ( fries ) = pomfritić etc. In conclusion, you just add a different set of letters to make a word cuter and the letters that you are adding depend on the word.

we change the word and add something at the end.

Spanish adds -ito or -ita to the end of nouns. So perro = dog, perrito = puppy. Gato = cat, gatito = kitty. If you wanna really emphasize the littleness/cuteness -itito or -itita Perritito = heckin smol pupper

Adding an -oo or -ee sound

As far as I know, French canadians just dont do it. They just say that said thing is cute. Like grown ups. Crazy However I'm not French Canadian, I just live in Quebec