Comments on: The German Diminutive: How To Make Cute Words https://emmalovesgerman.com/german-diminutive/ Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:12:08 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: Tom https://emmalovesgerman.com/german-diminutive/#comment-3897 Tue, 25 Apr 2023 23:22:30 +0000 https://emmalovesgerman.com/?p=6700#comment-3897 When I was in Germany over 50 years ago, learning with other Australians how to run an alumina refinery and German at the same time, a colleague came into our office to tell us a new word he had learnt: it was “Pümpchen”. The word for “pump” is “die Pumpe”, and they were huge things, capable of pumping thousands of cubic metres per hour. However, the foreman that my colleague was accompanying pointed to a very small pump dosing a chemical, and referred to it as “das Pümpchen”.

Later on, when living in Switzerland, I found that southern dialects (e.g., Allemannisch, Schwiizerdütsch” often use the diminutive suffix “lein”, and this can be contracted to “li” or even just “l”, hence “das Mädl” or “das Städl”. You could say “‘n bitzli Brot” instead of “ein bisschen Brot”.

]]> By: Brian https://emmalovesgerman.com/german-diminutive/#comment-3894 Tue, 25 Apr 2023 19:02:14 +0000 https://emmalovesgerman.com/?p=6700#comment-3894 So one can order a small jug of coffee??! Das ist für mich!!

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