A little delight

There was a time when home movies were shot on Super-8 film no wider than a bootlace, whirring through smart little wind-up cameras. The movies they produced were pleasantly grainy and over-coloured, which would lend an ideal air of antiquity to the scene I need to paint here.

Imagine that, through such a gentle time-lens, we observe two small white cottages standing close together on a small farm, a finca. The cottages are paintbook-simple, just low white boxes with a window and a door, but they are charmingly framed by palm trees and fruit bushes, with vines trailing on overhead wires and tiny birds flitting prettily among the leaves.

From the door of the cottage on the left emerges a man of around forty-something wearing denim shorts, a lumberjack shirt and a straw hat. He pauses for a moment then sidles casually in the direction of the neighbouring house, glancing towards it now and again and craning his neck as though trying to catch a glimpse of something through the window.

He goes back indoors again. Birds continue flitting prettily. The movie camera's microphone picks up the sound of male laughter from the house on the right, together with some clinkings and bangings.

A few minutes later a younger man emerges from this second house, strolls confidently towards the house on the left and calls out something. The straw-hat guy pops out from his doorway again and looks enquiringly at the newcomer, who repeats what he said before. Straw hat shakes his head and shrugs apologetically - he doesn't understand.

Let's freeze the film at this embarrassing moment to analyse what is going wrong. The fellow under the straw hat is a younger version of me. The word that is failing to communicate itself is copita, which means a little glass. If the visitor had said copa, a glass, I might have got it, but of course he couldn't do that because to invite someone for a drink requires the extra depth and friendliness of the -ita ending.

Una copita? Fancy a little drink, share a few minutes of friendly exchange, toast each other's health?

I learned this lesson very quickly and this simple little diminutive is now my favourite feature of the Spanish language. You encounter it everywhere, -ita or -ito.

Sometimes it's merely descriptive - so a bocado is a bite to eat while a bocadito is an itsy-bitsy bite to eat. But usually it's much more. Very often it implies fondness for someone or something. Juan is just a guy called Juan. Juanito is your valued friend, your husband or brother, someone close. He doesn't have to be small to merit the -ito, there are many large Juanitos with middle-age paunches. In fact it's much better when they're big because the -ito is so endearingly off-target.

Equally off-target was our elderly neighbour, a charming lady now sadly departed (see Neighbours, 27 February 2016), who used to refer to us as los pollitos which means 'the little chickens'. And no, I have no idea why, but I think it's delightful.

Very often an -ito or -ita softens and smoothes, takes the sting out of a word. You order a cup of café con leche, coffee with milk, and when it's time to pay you're asked for un eurito which sounds so much friendlier that a clinical euro. Just a little euro...

I remember once commenting to a waiter that there didn't seem to be many customers around today and he shrugged and said it was la horita, the little hour - in other words, it was early and they'd turn up later.

On a good swimming day the sea isn't just clara, clear - it's clarita, clarita! Beautifully clear! And the surface is tranquilito, the temperature is frescita when you first plunge in, a little fresh, but soon feels calentita, warm, and altogether it's a día bonito, a lovely day!

At which happy point I'd better restart my Super-8 time machine to round things off for you. We see the straw-hatted guy being rescued by his much more gifted wife, who emerges from the house to greet the stranger and interpret that they're being invited for a little drink. The three of them potter across to the house next door and disappear inside. An hour later can be heard jolly laughter and the cheerful clatter of plates and cutlery.

If the camera peeks nosily through a window it will show the two of us sitting around a table with four local lads, one of whom is supposedly acting as caretaker for his uncle's house. This was our first week and we hadn't known about this useful arrangement.

And clearly enough, through the pointillist mist of this ancient moving image, we see the table dotted not only with bottles of wine but also, in the correct Spanish manner, with little dishes of tapas in the form of green and black olives, baby squids and fresh anchovies. One of the young men now runs his own bar-restaurant in town.

And there the film runs out, but hasta luegito! Until the next time - the little next time, soonish!


Notes for the serious student
There is another form of diminutive that irrevocably changes the word - so for example, un palo is a stick while un palillo is a toothpick. Un plato is a plate, un platillo is a saucer. While this device is clearly useful it's merely functional and lacks the magic I describe above.

And by the way, Super 8mm cine film is being revived. Introduced by Kodak in 1965, it continued to be the main amateur movie format for the following decade and beyond, until digital video began to take over. I now read that early in 2016 Kodak introduced a brand new Super-8 movie camera that uses the same film format as all those years ago. The world is getting so much better at nostalgia, it's quite heartening.