The suffix -let (as in “piglet” and “owlet”)also conveys a diminutive sense, like -ling does. Possibly related suffixes? Two modern examples that come to mind are referring to a child as a “kidlet” (spellcheck doesn’t like that one) and “chiclet” (small squarish chewing gum piece).
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Schmoopie.
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Hoo boy. This has been my fear since audiobooks and videos started to eclipse written content. 
Hopefully, educators will continue to find creative ways to demonstrate that access to information is not a substitute for wisdom, knowledge, or critical thinking. They overcame CliffsNotes, movie adaptations of classic works of literature, and other shortcuts attempted by students in the past. I’m rooting for them to win this battle, too.
Reports like this remind me of this Outer Limits episode. It reinforces the dangers of depending on tech to think for everyone, because of the consequences if it fails: "The Outer Limits" Stream of Consciousness (TV Episode 1997) - IMDb
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usually we just add a “y” or “ie” sound to the end. father=dad=daddy, Robert=Robbie or Bob=Bobby. we have Auntie but not Uncle-y, for some reason. Sister can be Sissy but that also means “not masculine” which includes a lot of sisters yet it seems to discount it for use as sister for that reason. but no brother-y or broie. so we do use the Y sound a lot but not always and you have to be fluent to know all the right ones, I guess.
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A good point, but all of these are incredibly restricted. They basically only work for personal names, familial relations (as you point out) and certain animals (you can have a (rubber) ducky but not a crane-y or alligator-y. Only pets (kitty, doggy, horsey), really).
In effect they are the vestiges of a developed diminutive system only productive when building words from a child’s perspective. In other languages you absolutely can tack diminutives onto any word, regardless of semantic content (“Kranichlein” and “Alligatörchen” are perfectly valid German words for the above two animals)
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Question for the literati here: I’m trying to find a word or phrase describing someone complaining about something they’ve enjoyed for free. “Choosy beggars” doesn’t quite get to it. The best example I can think of is from the Simpsons: (tried to find a clip, but couldn’t)
Comic Book Guy: Last night’s Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world.
Bart Simpson: Hey, I know it wasn’t great, but what right do you have to complain?
Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart Simpson: What? They’ve given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.
Comic Book Guy: Worst episode ever.
Any suggestions?
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My father used to refer to my daughters as “young ladies”, which was fine from a gentleman of his era, but would not normally be used anymore. The equivalent would be “young men” rather than “young gentlemen”, so that’s an issue right there, and “young master” definitely has an upper class British or southern plantation ring to it, so definitely NO.
There’s so much Spanish in the States that my kids have occasionally referred to me as “mamacita”. It’s much easier in the Romance languages. “Mommy” is the sort of thing only a young child would use; by grade school, they’d be bullied if they continued to use it.
“Little Mama” is sometimes used by a significant other to refer to their wife/lover/girlfriend, especially if there is a child between them.
You’re right: there really isn’t a great way to do it in English!
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Entitled. If you want to make a noun, entitled dickhead.
(Ok, maybe it’s too general, and not specific enough to your example.)
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Freemoaner
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In protuguese we use INHO/INHA as diminutive and a lot of times to show affection.
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Or the team sports style of adding an “o” Robbo, Johnno, etc. not sure why this really does link with sports and, of course is only applicable to (some) names.
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Horse-mouth-gazer?
Hand-biter?
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Ingrate.
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without knowing a word for that specifically, I would probably call that person a curmudgeon.
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Nah, a curmudgeon is prickly on the outside but warm and cuddly underneath when you get to know them.
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I’ve become very disillusioned with Duolingo as of late.
I’ve had a several years of prior classroom experience learning Japanese so I’d say I’m probably advanced beginner. I know all the kana, a couple hundred kanji, and the basics of grammar and vocabulary. When I was last in Japan I was able to get by with survival-level knowledge, but I’m hardly conversational. I’ve always wanted to get really proficient, and I like Duolingo’s gamification approach. The early lessons were easy to me since they were reinforcing things I largely already knew and other than some unfamiliar kanji or words, I could get by without too much fuss. Now as I’m progressing further, I’m finding that the Japanese lessons are becoming more and more frustrating and less useful. New grammatical concepts are being introduced with no real explanation or rationale. Important concepts are simply not being mentioned at all or glossed over which leads to more confusion.
For example, anybody who knows anything about Japanese knows there’s a whole bunch of different politeness levels in speech. These politeness levels can alter sentences significantly. This isn’t really covered at all, and can be jarring when it starts introducing sentences with more familiar speech patterns (especially when this was never discussed in the lessons). Idiomatic translations are being introduced with no real explanation. This one in particular really annoyed me:
Seems like a simple enough sentence and translation, right? Here’s the problem though. Nothing about this seemingly simple sentence makes any sense based on the previous 16 or so lessons that preceded it. First is the verb stem 〜ました which is a past-tense conjugation. Yet, the translation is present tense which would indicate 〜ます should be used. Then there’s the use of 「すき」which up until now has been used to mean “like” (usually with the kanji - but sometimes Duolingo mixes things up and gives you kana vs kanji in the word bank). But in prior lessons, it was always used as an adverb. Finally there’s the subject word 「お腹」which isn’t covered in any vocabulary. Nothing about this made sense to me.
Anyway, the reason this didn’t make any sense to me is because the English translation is completely idiomatic.「お腹」means “stomach” and 「すきました」 is actually the verb for “empty”. So in essence this sentence is literally saying, “my stomach was emptied”. That’s actually a really neat phrase! I wish this was explained rather than dumbing it down to be a rote “remember this phrase and what it means” without any further context. There’s a lot of this, unfortunately.
Thank goodness the forums were there with more information on this, and that many others were equally confused about this. But, I also recently learned that the forums, this super critical resource for filling in the gaps from the lessons, has been shut down and everything is locked for further discussion. That’s really shitty. There’s also no way to bookmark forum posts in the app so I have to take screenshots and refer to them later which is really inefficient.
Then there some other things that I’m finding. Furigana that just don’t match the voiced text. This makes the word bank for listening lessons extra fun of you don’t know all the readings for a kanji and are relying on furigana as a crutch. Then there’s other things I’m finding that really annoy me. Why are there no lessons on kanji specifically? Why doesn’t it tell you how to read or write kanji? Why are there no speaking lessons? (Other languages have these.) Why aren’t there lessons about particles? I’ve dabbled a little in other languages and they are so much more robust. I’ve also found that some other languages let you go back and correct simple mistakes if you get something wrong like a word out of order or something missing. Japanese doesn’t let you do this which can be demotivating if you pick one wrong thing from the word bank or write one small typo.
When you get something wrong, other than telling you what’s “correct” it doesn’t tell you why. Particles are hard, so tell me why did I need 「で」vs.「に」vs,「へ」, or my absolute nemesis particle 「には」? The locked down forums almost always help, but it’s also jarring to have to pause and read a bunch of posts and lose that momentum. I just wish the lessons were better without so much reliance on rote memorization.
Basically, this is how I’m feeling right now:
Duolingo may have my money for the next year so I’m not going to give up. However, as I trudge along with the lessons in the hope that things get better, I’m also seeking alternatives. The most promising thus far is Kanshudo. I’m really liking many aspects of it. It lets you jump ahead or back, so I have freedom to try more intermediate things without penalty unlike Duolingo locks away higher level content forcing you into its “one true path”. It also has lessons on Japanese pitch accents which was a revelation to me. Throughout the years of classroom education I’ve had, this concept was literally never taught to me. I’ve always noticed it while listening to Japanese but I never realized the method behind it, or how it’s used to distinguish certain homonyms. Instead it was always taught to me that, “this is how you pronounce words, here’s the short list of exceptions, and this is how it is”. It also has lessons on how to read and write kanji. Unfortunately, there’s no mobile app and the website is really clunky on my phone.
To further supplement kanji, I’m also trying out WaniKani which looks promising. Unfortunately, it has no kind of “placement test” or ability to skip ahead so it’s very restricting right now in the early levels. It has a very deliberate pace that it requires you to follow.
Anyway sorry for the long rant but I wanted to get this off my chest.
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Just generally regarding the new Learning Path “feature”, I’ve given it what I think is a fair try, and my summary so far is: “Thanks I hate it.”
They claim that people were getting confused about the best way to complete the old course: to you get to level one then go back and fill in to gold, or do you complete stages then move ahead? They claim that this is meant to remove the confusion. They claim that choice is bad and there is only one way to learn and their algorithm will tell you what to do next. Well, that last bit is implicit. But strongly implicit, and baked into everything now.
They claimed that there would be a “practice” button, especially for those who’ve completed the path. They lied. (On Android, at least.) They claimed that the stories would be “included in the path”, this is a lie, and also a broken decision. I, for one, have difficulty with accessing audio content, and have to make a special effort to be able to do stories with their baked in audio. And so I have the audio tests turned off (spoken and hearing) for the normal path. As far as I can tell, that means I don’t get stories any more, nor is there any way to get to them specially. I will learn in the way they tell me to learn, and choice is bad and wrong.
For some languages, the only way to practice now for me is to bring them up to Legendary… only I’m not confident in a lot of it, and I’d really like to practice, like really drill in specific things. And I can’t. All I can do is beat my head against the Legendary levels like a moth at a window, and not actually learn anything, and certainly not gain any points. Which is to say, it has game-ified the learning process so much that I am now actively being punished for trying to improve specific aspects and making an effort.
I appreciate that it took a lot of effort from a lot of people to make this change and get all the bits working more or less right. But it’s actively alienating me (and my streak of 2270 days), and I hate it, and I would like some goddamned choices back you bastards.
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If you can get your hands on one, I suggest getting a modern electronic dictionary for learning kanji. These will have a touchpad and a stylus for manually writing kanji that you want to look up. Then, pick up a text (manga is fine) without furigana (furigana are not your friend if you really want to learn kanji) and look up the kanji by physically writing them one by one on the touchpad with the stylus. Being forced to actually write them makes a world of difference in retention. If you cannot get your hands on an electronic dictionary, there are probably smartphone apps that have the same stylus functionality, so you can look into that as well.
As for particles, they are absolutely critical to parsing sentences, so I suggest getting your hands on study materials for JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Levels 5 and 4 (higher numbers = lower proficiency levels) and working through them until you have a solid grasp on what the particles are doing in terms of meaning.
Although there is a lot more to it, of course, 「で」 indicates the location where an action happens or a method that is used to complete that action and 「に」 indicates where something is located OR the destination of travel or a sent object, while 「へ」 only indicates the destination of travel or a sent object, but not where something is. 「には」means the same thing as 「に」, but the 「は」 is drawing a distinction, so it becomes “here (as opposed to there).”
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Which is, you know, everyone you meet.
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A quick search on Japanese Google indicates that the term originates in Ancient China, where a woman was expected to take her own life shortly after the death of her husband, meaning that it was a pejorative term for somebody who had not done so yet.
Evidently, the term is not used in modern Chinese, but a lot of words from ancient Chinese entered the Japanese language in the seventh and eighth centuries, alongside the entire writing system. (That’s right. Japan did not have a writing system until around the turn of the seventh century. Because of the lack of written texts from before that, Japanese history before then is extremely murky.)
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