Spanish: An Essential Grammar

blanco white blancucho dirty white

cama bed camastro rickety old bed

Combinations of suffixes

Sometimes suffixes can be used in combination. The practice is not wide-

spread but some individual combinations are common:

chico‘small’ > chiquitito/chiquitillo/chiquitín‘very small’

calle‘street’ > callejón‘alley’

guapo/a‘handsome/pretty’ > guapetón/ona‘very handsome/pretty’

puño‘fist’ > puñetazo‘blow with the fist’

río‘river’ > riachuelo‘small stream’

In Latin America especially, the suffix is sometimes repeated to stress the

effect:Me han dejado aquí solitita. [LA] ‘They’ve left me here all alone’.

Prefixes

The use of prefixes is less common than that of suffixes as a means of

forming words. Therefore, learners of Spanish tend to find prefixes easier

to master, especially since prefixes are similar in English and Spanish and

they perform a similar function in each language.

De(s)-

Probably the most common prefix in Spanish, it is frequently used to indi-

cate a negative or opposite meaning:

animar to encourage desanimar to discourage

montar to assemble desmontar to dismantle

congelarto freeze descongelar to defrost

It can also be used to create verbs which signify that something is removed,

even though there is no equivalent verb stating the opposite:

29.2.1

29.2

29.1.7

1111

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1011

1

12111

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

20111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

30111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

40

41111

29

Word
formation

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