English diminutives are very rudimentary and irregular compared to inflected languages.
In some language you can form several levels of diminutives from any noun. Even stuff that makes no sense, like "cute taxes", "cute death", "cute abstraction", "cute declension".
And you can form the opposite - take a noun and create less cute/uglier/larger version of it.
And these additional forms still obey the other rules, including declension. So there's a combinatorial explosion of versions of each word.
> Even stuff that makes no sense, like "cute taxes", "cute death", "cute abstraction"
A cute abstraction would definitely be my thing. As we would say in Italian, an astrazioncella, or astrazionuccia, or astrazioncelluccia, or astrazioncinuccia, or astrazioncinelluccia. :)
When learning some Italian I was both dismayed and fascinated to discover that it was necessary to avoid every diminutive ("cute") and augmentative I could think of, because they all carry sexual innuendo.
In some language you can form several levels of diminutives from any noun. Even stuff that makes no sense, like "cute taxes", "cute death", "cute abstraction", "cute declension".
And you can form the opposite - take a noun and create less cute/uglier/larger version of it.
And these additional forms still obey the other rules, including declension. So there's a combinatorial explosion of versions of each word.