little big mice and rats?
So this is a silly question, but one that I'm curious about. Rats are bigger than mice. I thought in Spanish, when something is bigger, one of the ways of expressing this is to put a -jon or -ote as a suffix. But in Spanish, the word for "rat" is rata, and the word for mouse is "ratón", which makes it sound like the mouse is bigger than the rat. My Mexican co-worker just told me you can also call a little mouse a "ratoncito", which sounds like "little big mouse".
This reminds me too of the word "callejón" is the word for alley, which is a small street. So I would think the logical word for alley would be "callecita", not something that means "big street".
Are these just anomalies in Spanish? Is it like in English you could say, "that's pretty ugly"? Or you could have a "jumbo shrimp" at the seafood restaurant?
1 Answer
This is a very interesting question to me because right now in my phonetics class I am studying about "aumentativos" (suffixes that form words which express a disproportionate size, or an excessive blow or force with an object expressed by its root). Some examples are: manotazo, pistolazo, flechazo y panzón. However, the word "ratón" is not an aumentativo. It comes from German "ratto". If my memory serves me some other words like this are "canción" y "camión". Another thing to point out is that "aumentativos" keep their gender, and if you notice "rata" is female and "ratón" is male.
