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As you learn Spanish, you will notice many interesting things in the Spanish language. It is called the “ito” / “ita” suffix or diminutive. In Spanish you can add the diminutive suffix to any noun. When you add “ito” or “ita” it means “little”. For example the word “casa” (house) can be modified to “casita”, meaning “little house”. The word “gato” means “cat” and the word “gatito” means “little cat”.

This “word ending” or “suffix” also has another meaning. I have had hundreds of experiences that have reinforced the meaning, but here is the experience that really made me pay more attention to the other meaning.

A family I knew called the Silvas fed me breakfast and dinner with them every day for about 3 months while I was living in South America. One morning Mrs. Silva brought in some breakfast. She brought in a pan with eggs that were swimming in oil. That is how they cooked their eggs — they would put a ton of oil in a pan and then put in the eggs. As she brought in the eggs, she said in Spanish, “Here are your huevitos”. In Spanish, eggs are “huevos” but she used the “ito” / “ita” suffix and called them “huevitos”.

When she put the eggs on our plates, I examined them carefully and asked, “These aren’t smaller than normal eggs, why do you call them “huevitos”? She looked at me with a strange look and said “Of course they’re not smaller.” I then asked her again, “so why do you call them ‘huevitos’”? She told me it was because she had made them with “cariño” (which means “caring.”) I wanted to make sure I heard her correctly and said “So, because you made them with ‘cariño’ you call them ‘huevitos’”? She confirmed what I had said and I found that I was learning a good culture lesson where you make things like “eggs” with “caring”.

I wanted to make sure this wasn’t something that just the Silva family did, so I began to listen more carefully to how others spoke. I noticed that many people would call their grandmothers “abuelita” instead of “abuela.” Even though their grandmothers weren’t necessarily “little,” I learned that “abuelita” is a way to say “grandmother” with “cariño” or “caring”.

The word for daughter is “hija” and many parents would call their daughters “hijita” even though they were already grown up. Obviously they weren’t calling their daughters “little daughter” but “daughter” with “cariño” or “caring”.

I grew to love this fascinating “little” cultural and language difference and really had a lot of fun with it. I teased Mrs. Silva for the next few days in a fun way by adding “ito” or “ita” to everything.

In summary, what I learned was that the “ito” / “ita” ending can be used to talk about “little” things, but it is also a term of endearment which shows “cariño” or “caring”.

Sneak Peak at Next Week: Cultural Differences in Personal Space

¡Que tengan un buen día! (I hope you all have a good day!)

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Learn Spanish, Spanish Culture, Spanish Words by Dave Clark