The "-illo" suffix

In Costa Rica, especially in the rural areas, people use the -illo diminutive suffix quite often. Since it's used liberally, the derogatory connotation does not apply--at least not in all cases and not to the same extent.

One common use, which is not unique to Costa Rica, is the use of 'chiquilla' to mean a young woman--often in a suggestive (but not inappropriate) way. Think of the word 'chick' in English with a more positive connotation.

A potential problem that arises when you use the -illo suffix is that many Spanish words change their meaning drastically when affixing -illo or -illa. For example, manzanilla isn't a little apple, but rather chamomile.

One time when I was moving tables around for a community event in a rural area, a man warned me that the tables were "pesadillas", which means that they're 'nightmares'. What he meant to say was that they are heavy, which for most Spanish speakers would be: "[las mesas] son pesadas". While I understood what he said in this context, the liberal use of the -illo suffix has the potential for creating confusing situations.

Here's a list of words to look out for, all of which have a different meaning from their suffix-less counterparts. (Keep in mind that not all of these pairs of words share the same morphological roots; for example, pandilla and panda do not share etymological origins.)

comilla (quotation mark) ≠ coma (comma)
pandilla (gang) ≠ panda (panda)
guerrilla (guerrilla) ≠ guerra (war)
sombrilla (umbrella) ≠ sombra (shade)
bombilla (light bulb, drinking straw in parts of South America) ≠ bomba (bomb)
pesadilla (nightmare) ≠ pesada (heavy)

There are countless others. These are just a few off the top of my head.

Word of the Day: Fritear

Fritear is a popular way to say the verb 'to fry'. The correct Spanish verb is actually 'freir', but many make the mistake of using the past participle of this verb, 'frito', as the base morpheme for the verb itself.

This non-standard way of speaking is also used in other areas of the Spanish-speaking world. I have heard the verb 'fritar' in other countries, which comes to mean the same thing. It's just that Costa Ricans will most commonly add an '-ear' ending to new, made-up verbs--whereas other cultures tend to simply add an '-ar' suffix.

To use a personal example, if I had a love interest at the time in Costa Rica, a friend of mine would always ask me "are you going to [insert girl's name here]-ear today"? (The actual pronunciation of the suffix is most commonly [-iar] because of the Costa Rican tendency to say the 'e' like an 'i' when forming a dipthong with an 'a' or an 'o', the two other "strong vowels" in Spanish.)