Friday, July 11, 2014

Smileyk.


The internet 'smiley' has been adopted into Russian, but with a diminutive suffix -k. It's not смайли, but смайлик — smileyk or smileek.

It's an interesting case of morphological change as it gives the word masculine gender and also allows declension. If it stayed as it is in English - смайли - it would require neutral gender and no declension. Most probably the change stems from the natural language inclination towards ease of use.

This one is by me, see it on my I Work in Pages blog.

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