B1 — intermediateDerivation: suffixation

Diminutives & augmentatives

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Diminutives and augmentatives: the emotional grammar of a Serbian day

In the lesson “Noun-forming suffixes” you took words apart into building blocks and saw that -ić and -ica can make something big into something small: grad → gradić “small town”, kuća → kućica “little house”. That lesson was about how a word is built. This one is about what it expresses, because a Serbian diminutive often has nothing to do with size. When a Serb invites you na kaficu, they are not promising a tiny cup: kafica is not a small amount of coffee, it is a warm coffee, coffee as an excuse, coffee as a conversation. Think of the British “fancy a cuppa?”: nobody is talking about the size of the cup.

This is the emotional grammar of everyday life. Diminutives caress, soften and invite; augmentatives do the opposite, they blow things up, and they easily tip over into rudeness. With a single suffix a Serb can turn kuća “house” into a cosy kućica or a hulking kućerina “great big house”, and žena “woman” into an affectionate ženica or an insulting ženetina, a coarse word for a woman. English mostly uses separate words for this (“little”, “nice”, “great big”); Serbian builds it into the word. Let’s see where the warmth is and where you can get burned.

Diminutive suffixes: a quick review

Let’s gather the suffixes in one place. A diminutive usually keeps the gender of its base word: gradić is masculine like grad, kućica feminine like kuća. The exception is -če in the table.

Examples

Suffix	Added to	Examples
-ić	masculine nouns	grad → gradić “small town”, nos → nosić “little nose”
-čić	masculine (after some stems)	kamen → kamenčić “pebble”, sin → sinčić “little son, sonny”
-ica	feminine nouns	kuća → kućica “little house”, ruka → ručica “little hand”, knjiga → knjižica “booklet”
-ce	neuter nouns	selo → seoce “hamlet, small village”, jezero → jezerce “little lake, pond”
-če	masculine nouns; the result is neuter	prozor → prozorče “little window”
-ence	neuter nouns in -e	dugme → dugmence “little button”

Watch the sound change at the joint: ruka → ručica (k → č), noga → nožica “little leg, little foot” (g → ž), knjiga → knjižica: the very palatalisation from the lesson “First palatalisation”. Some neuter nouns take the longer suffix -ašce: sunce → sunašce “dear little sun”, srce → srdašce “little heart, sweetheart” (note the d). You do not need to learn these forms as a list; what matters is to recognise them and to feel what they express.

Don’t mistake diminutives for the words for young animals. Mače “kitten” (from mačka “cat”), pile “chick”, jagnje “lamb”, tele “calf” are words of their own, neuter nouns in -e, like English kitten or puppy: not pet forms. Their plural is special too (tele → telad, the lesson “Pluralia tantum & collectives”), and in the other cases they grow an -et-: mače → mačeta (the lesson “Irregular nouns”).

And some diminutives have long become words of their own, with no smallness left in them: devojčica is “a little girl”, a child, not a small young woman (devojka); kafić is “a café”, not “a little coffee”; ručica is a little hand but also “a handle, a lever”. And ulica “street” and učiteljica “a woman teacher” are no diminutives at all, though they look like them.

Deeper etymology

Nežnost na -ić: an old toolkit shared by all Slavic languages

The Serbian diminutive system is not a Serbian invention: it goes back to Proto-Slavic, the reconstructed ancestor of all the Slavic languages, and every one of them still has some version of it. Serbian -ić does the job that English -let or -ie does (stolić “little table”, gradić “small town”), but its origin is its own: Proto-Slavic *-itj-. Feminine -ica gives vodica “a drop of water, nice fresh water” and kućica “little house, cottage”; neuter -ce gives seoce “hamlet” and jezerce “little lake”. English hamlet, by the way, is itself a diminutive in origin (Old French hamelet, a little hamel, “village”), so seoce and hamlet were built the same way.

The practical lesson: when you meet a Serbian diminutive, strip the suffix, find the base word, and add “little” or “dear” in your head; the meaning and the warm tone will usually come through. But there is a trap of look-alikes. The same -ica is sometimes not a diminutive at all: učiteljica is “a woman teacher”, and ulica is simply “street” (there is no “ula” for it to be a small version of). The lesson “Noun-forming suffixes” warned about the many faces of -ica. So the suffix points the way, but the root and the meaning have the last word: kuća → kućica is a diminutive, while ulica is a word in its own right.

Kafica: a suffix that warms rather than shrinks

In everyday speech a diminutive very often says nothing about size and everything about warmth, comfort and company. Kafica is not “a small coffee” but “a coffee among friends”; pivce is not a thimble of beer but “a nice cold beer, just for the pleasure of it”; rakijica is “a little glass of rakija” to go with a good conversation.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Diminutives and augmentatives

More about feeling than size. Four kinds: diminutive (deminutiv) kuća → kućica; pet form (hipokoristik) Jovan → Jova, majka → mama; augmentative (augmentativ) kuća → kućerina; pejorative (pejorativ) žena → ženetina. The last two often share a form; attitude decides.

Diminutive suffixes

Examples

Suffix	Added to	Examples
-ić	Masculine	grad → gradić small town, nos → nosić little nose
-čić	Masculine, some stems	kamen → kamenčić pebble, sin → sinčić sonny
-ica	Feminine	kuća → kućica little house, ruka → ručica little hand
-ce	Neuter	selo → seoce hamlet, jezero → jezerce little lake
-če	Masculine → neuter	prozor → prozorče little window
-ence	Neuter in -e	dugme → dugmence little button

Joint: k → č, g → ž (ručica, nožica, knjižica). Long -ašce: sunašce dear little sun, srdašce sweetheart. Not diminutives: mače kitten, pile chick (young animals), ulica street, učiteljica woman teacher. Own words now: devojčica little girl, kafić café, ručica also lever.

It warms, it doesn't shrink

kafica is not “a small coffee” but a reason to meet; pivce a nice beer, rakijica a little rakija, čašica a little glass, minutić just a minute, sekundica just a sec, supica a nice bit of soup, salatica a little salad, parica a bit of cash. From above it belittles: ženica “little wife” or “little woman”.

Softening a request

It lightens the request, not the thing.

Pet forms

Augmentatives and pejoratives

Examples

Base	Form	Shade
kuća house	kućerina great big house	big, disapproving
nos nose	nosina schnozz	mocking
glava head	glavurda noggin	rather rough
žena woman	ženetina coarse woman	rude, hurtful
pas dog	psina big dog	can be admiring

Suffixes -ina, -etina/-erina, -urina, -urda; rarely neutral. Joint: k → č, fleeting a drops (pas → psina). Declined like žena (velika kućerina); nosina, psina: agreement varies. Praise: junačina a real hero, čovečina a real mensch, momčina a strapping lad. Wound: seljačina yokel, babetina old hag.