É un Lupo o un Cane? (Italian Edition)

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Diminutives are a category of suffixes which indicate smallness, thus attenuating or diminishing in some way the meaning of the original noun. Before we start looking at some practical examples of Italian suffixes, I need to give you a few words of caution. The 20th-century writer Gianni Rodari was famous his nursery rhymes, in which he played with suffixes and false suffixes. Here is “Filastrocca corta e gaia”, one of the most splendid examples of his work – enjoy! How many altered nouns can you count? It often occurs within the compound suffix –ellino (as in fiorellino, “small flower”, and agnellino, “little lamb”). –etto, often used with affectionate overtones In addition, suffixes cannot be added indiscriminately to all nouns. Some nouns do not accept them at all, others combine with some suffixes but not with others, and only very few of them can be matched with all suffixes.

A highly dynamic language, Italian features a special category of suffixes called “modifying suffixes” (or alterazioni). It works just like an adjective–but without the need of one! They express a distinct quality and add particular shades of meaning to the original noun. Unlike the usual suffixes, though, they do not change it radically: the core meaning always stays intact, and so does the original syntactic category–to put it simply, nouns don’t turn into adjectives and vice versa. In English, there are few suffixes like these. In Italian, in contrast, these mechanisms for word formation are frequent both in everyday conversations and literature. ello: albero—alberello; asino—asinello; paese—paesello; rondine—rondinella; cattivo—cattivello; povero—poverelloacchione and – accione, compound suffixes derived from “-one” which tend to have an ironic connotation A suffix is a letter or group of letters that is added to the end of a word to create a new word, often with a different grammatical function. Indipendentemente dalle dimensioni, tutti i cani discendono dai lupi, da qui il nome scientifico canis lupus familiaris. Questo perché, diverse migliaia di anni fa, l'uomo ha addomesticato il canis lupus dando vita alle razze che conosciamo oggi. This is also unpredictable, but it is often done for phonetic reasons ( miciaccio sounds terrible, for example). If a word already ends in a particular suffix, such as the noun stregone, you can’t really add the – one suffix to it, but have to use an adjective instead. First and foremost, identify the word root; this is an essential step if you want to make sure the word you’re creating is grammatically correct.

Modifying suffixes is a very Italian way of creating new words, which means that you’ll come across plenty of them, both in conversation and print, when learning this language. icci(u)olo: asta—asticci(u)ola; festa—festicciola; porto—porticciolo; sometimes can also have a pejorative sense: donna—donnicci(u)ola Therefore, for any given suffix in this lesson, you will find four versions: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. La caratteristica principale di un cane simile al lupo è principalmente di base genetica: alcuni cani condividono numerosi tratti fisici con i lupi.

What if I told you that there are special Italian suffixes that can be used to describe nouns instead of using an adjective? Common in baby talk, diminutives are the richest category of altered words in Italian. If you are looking for the right suffix, you will be spoiled for choice! Moreover, combinations of these suffixes occur frequently, thus offering plenty of further options… –ino, the most common diminutive suffix in Italian when it rains you need an ombrello (umbrella) and when it is sunny you want to sit in the shade ( ombra) erello (a variant of - ello): fatto—fatterello; fuoco—f(u)ocherello. Frequently used concurrently with other suffixes: storia—storiella—storiellina; bucco—bucherello—bucherellino This is a cat, but is this a particularly ugly cat or a particularly cute cat? You can use a suffix to convey how you feel about things!