Learn the answer to the question 'What are pejoratives?'
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| Hi everybody! Rosa here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Spanish questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| What are pejoratives and how do you use them in Spanish? |
| In previous lessons we discussed diminutives and augmentatives, and in this lesson we’ll discuss pejoratives. |
| You may already know diminutives make something smaller or affectionate, and augmentatives make something bigger or important. So, what do pejoratives do? |
| Perjoratives are used to emphasize something negative. We’ll go over the most common ones in this lesson. |
| Let’s go over some examples so you can learn how to use pejoratives correctly. |
| A common pejorative suffix is -ucho or -ucha. For example from flaco, "slim" or "thin," we get flacucho. When used in a pejorative sense, it means "very slim," as in almost sick. Another example would be for the adjective débil, "weak," we get debilucha, used to describe a woman who is physically or psychologically weak. |
| Another pejorative suffix is -acho or -acha. For example pueblo from the Latin “populus” meaning "people," becomes populacho meaning “common people” or “mob.” By adding the suffix -acho, the speaker shows less consideration for the original meaning of "people." Another example would be from pueblo “town,” which becomes poblacho meaning “dirty town” or “destroyed town.” |
| Here’s an example sentence-- |
| El populacho cree que puede ganar en las elecciones. |
| It means “The common people think that they can win the elections.” |
| Usually people use these suffixes to gossip or to look down on others. You don’t always use the same suffixes for every word, as each word is used mostly with just one suffix. So make sure you check which suffix to use before you use it. |
| Here we have other less common pejorative suffixes-- |
| ...like -ejo or -eja, changing tipo meaning “guy” to tipejo “bad guy," calle meaning “road” to calleja “narrow road." |
| ...or -uzo or -uza, from gente meaning “people” we get gentuza “bad people." All of these examples are used pejoratively. |
| Lastly is -ato or -ata. You would use this for the word niño, "boy," and get niñato “brat." Be careful with this word because it has a really bad meaning and can be considered an insult as well. |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting, right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them! |
| ¡Hasta luego! “See you later!” |
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