English affixes in Spanish
Summary
Description
Information and examples are from Mott (2015) and García Velasco (2020), and they relate to European Spanish. In that variety, the -ing suffix is highly productive and generally used to form deverbal nouns. Two facts bear witness to its productivity: First, -ing can freely combine with native Spanish stems to derive words that do not have direct equivalents in English, the source language; Second, nonce formations with the -ing suffix regularly appear in advertisement language, as reported by García Velasco (2020:126). This suffix -ing is also attested in French as a gerund marker (Lewis 2007:52).
1 nominalization suffix
- -ing, used to form words in regular usage, e.g. metring (metro ‘underground railway’) ‘riding on the back of underground trains’ (Mott 2015:175), tumbing (tumbarse ‘to stretch out’) ‘lying around’ (Mott 2015:175), bungee salting (saltar ‘to jump’, Mott 2015:180)/cuerding (cuerda ‘rope, string’, Mott 2015:180)/goming (goma ‘rubber’, Mott 2015:191)/puenting (puente ‘bridge’, Mott 2015:180) ‘bungee jumping’, panching (pancha ‘belly’) ‘sunbathing’ (Mott 2015:180), balconing (balcón ‘balcony’) ‘jumping from the balcony of a holiday apartment into the swimming pool below, often with fatal consequences’ (Mott 2015:180), sanfermining (San Fermín, name of a saint/holiday) ‘a humorous reference to the risky practice of running in the path of the bulls in the streets of Pamplona ［...］ as part of the celebrations in honour of San Fermin’ (Lorenzo 1996:250–52, quoted in Mott 2015:181). The suffix is also used in nonce formations in advertising, e.g. cinking (cinco ‘five’) ‘a five-year warranty provided by Hyundai cars’, Aurging (Aurgi, a car repair company): here, the intended reading probably tries to emphasize the (presumably) good service of the company, sonrising (sonrisa ‘smile’) ‘to enjoy something’ (from a travel agency advertisement), sofing (sofá ‘sofa’) ‘to rest and do nothing’ (from a furniture store advertisement), disfruting (disfrutar ‘enjoy’): brand name of a financial services company, edredoning (edredón ‘duvet’) ‘to hide underneath a duvet to have sex avoiding being recorded by cameras’, duerming (from an irregular form of the verb dormir ‘to sleep’): brand name of a hotel chain, viding (vida ‘life’): a brand name for a real estate company, vueling (volar ‘fly’, alternate stem vuel-): brand name of a Spanish airline (García Velasco 2020:126–127).