EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 85 Small and Cute: Diminuves 468 / 600
85 Small and Cute: Diminutives
Croatian – as many other languages, but unlike English – has mechanisms for
creating nouns standing for miniature versions of things. Those words are often
applied to babies, children, and parts of them, and therefore stand for ‘cute’ and
‘dear’ things as well.
For instance, in Croatian you can say that a baby has a glava head, but people prefer
to call it glavica little head. Such words are called diminutives and usually have a
different emotional content.
Diminutives are words that are derived through a process that’s only partially
regular. Not all nouns have a diminutive, and there are various endings to derive
them – they are like relational adjectives in that manner.
For nouns ending in -a, the main way to form diminutives is by replacing -a with -ica.
The result is another noun, again ending in -a:
glava head → glavica
krava cow → kravica
kiša rain → kišica
kuća house → kućica
pčela bee → pčelica
riba fish → ribica
tata m dad → tatica m
žena woman/wife → ženica
As you can see, this applies to words like tata as well – the result is a word that
corresponds to English Daddy.
In some meanings, diminutives are always used: for example the golden fish from
stories, who grants wishes, is always zlatna ribica.
Certain nouns ending in -ka or -ga shift consonants (like k → č, g → ž etc.) but it
doesn’t happen to all nouns – forms must be learned:
baka grandmother → bakica
daska plank → daščica
mačka cat → mačkica
ptica bird → ptičica
ruka hand, arm → ručica
noga foot, leg → nožica
For some words, you’ll encounter both forms, e.g. nožica and nogica (forms with
unchanged consonants are more common in the wider Zagreb area).
Croatian has two words for girl – one is colloquial, and another more formal; the
derived diminutives have the same use:
cura (colloq.) girl → curica
djevojka (formal) girl → djevojčica
Certain diminutives have specific meanings. For example, ručica also means handle
(e.g. on a door). More examples of a slight shift in meaning:
tikva pumpkin → tikvica zucchini (courgette)
torba bag → torbica purse