Less is more

Voy a llegar tardecito' (I'm going to be a little bit late) is one of those phrases in Spanish which is guaranteed to send a chill down the spine of anyone on the receiving end. The tardy arrival in question could be anything from fifteen minutes to fifteen months and it's the word 'tardecito' which carries the punch. Spanish diminutives, mostly expressed with the 'ito' or 'ita' suffixes are often nothing less than verbal stealth bombs designed to lull you into a cutesy false sense of security before exploding mercilessly before your very eyes.

The classic example of the genre is 'cervecita' (little beer) as opposed to the full-fat term 'cerveza' (beer). Should you be asked to join someone for a 'cervecita' in Malaga you can rest assured that you'll wind up in a less-than-salubrious joint somewhere just north of Valencia at five o'clock in the morning, chugging tequila slammers and girating wildly on the bar with your trousers on your head while belting out Delilah to a bewildered crowd. Or maybe that was just me.

Similarly, if somebody says to you 'hace calorcito' (it's a little bit hot), what they actually mean is that the weather is a searing inferno causing all blond and ginger people present to tear desperately at their own skin and plead with random passers-by to put them out of their misery with the nearest available weapon.

It doesn't stop there. The term 'perrito', or even more alarmingly 'perrico' (both mean 'little dog') will inevitably refer to a pet whose behaviour - and often size - would make the hounds of Hades look like a couple of guide dogs for the blind. See also: 'gatito' (little cat/kitten) which is guaranteed to be an animal with three-feet-long retractable claws and a hiss that can perforate an ear drum at forty paces.

These diminutives don't just serve as lexical Trojan horses either; they can also be offered as little verbal slaps to keep the vain and the arrogant in their place. 'Guapito' is the classic example, derived as it is from the wholly complimentary 'guapo' (good-looking) but carrying a strong element of thinly-veiled disapproval, not to say disdain. Let's face it, 'He's a little bit good-looking' isn't a description most of us would want to hear about ourselves. Professionally, too, terms like 'abogadillo' (little lawyer) can be used to take a person down a peg or two if they're seen to be getting a bit above themselves.

Anyway, enough of all that; it's time I headed off for a 'siestita' (little siesta) which, with any luck, I will have awoken from in time to write next week's column.

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