Costita Ricilla

It wouldn’t and doesn’t make much sense to judge a country by its size. There are great countries that are small, and pretty miserable countries that are big. Costa Rica is a pretty small country, coming in as number 128 of about 200 countries in size, with it’s 51,100 square kilometers. It’s smaller than West Virginia and bigger than Maryland, a fact that may be helpful if you live back East. But, either way, it’s country that can be comfortably crossed east-west or north-south in a day. I have no idea whether the size of the country has anything to do with the way people talk, but well, looks like I’ve wasted a few sentences suggesting it. But, what this sloppy introduction is trying to bring about is that the thing I first noticed, and continually notice about the way Costa Ricans talk is that they make everything smaller.

In Spanish, there are three main diminutive suffixes: -ito, –illo, and –ico. Because almost all Spanish nouns end in either o or a (depending on the noun gender (a mostly useless grammar component-if you ask me)), you just replace the o in each of the suffixes if the noun is feminine. Before coming here, I had pretty much just seen these diminutives used to express that something was quite small (exactly what it should be used for) or to make something sound cute. It is also often added to the noun when asking for a favor-just like we say, “can you do me a tiny favor” or “can you do me a little favor”. But, when I got here, it was like every darn thing in this country was small. I noticed this mostly because it was troublesome. Because it’s a suffix, it changes the actual word-instead of just putting a modifying word next to it. I got over it pretty quickly and now am cognizant of listening for and expecting the –ito or –illo to be added to almost everything.

Due to my only other experience in a Spanish speaking country being in Spain, I have no idea if this is unique to Costa Rica or not. I don’t really know why they do it. It could be that everyone is just trying to be super polite, but if so, by everyone doing it all the time, it no longer becomes polite and loses its meaning. (Do we think that I’m overanalyzing things here? maybe). I tend to think that they don’t actually think that everything is little and cute, especially when it’s used for things that aren’t really that small. Obviously, as it’s the way they talk Costa Ricans don’t notice it, and I’ve never brought it up with any Tico. But, I can’t help but think that it’s not just them all trying to be polite, but might have to do with the country’s size and so many Costa Ricans roots in small towns (urbanization has only happened very recently). That’s a big assumption, but I’m a big thinker that environmental/natural surroundings have a big effect on language. I’m thinking this post might be a huge bore, but to me, language differences like this are super interesting-and are a good reminder that I always need to say “we don’t say it that way where I’m from, but other people may say that” when students ask about some English phrase.

(Picture is of some host cousins swimming in Rio Sarapiqui during Holy Week vacation).