From el Popo(catépetl) to Polvos Pica-pica: The Marvels of Reduplication
You're reading this article in English, so I've made a few assumptions about you in order to write it. I'll make yet another one. I'll assume you've probably heard all or most of the following and understand what they mean: willy-nilly , fifty-fifty , kitty-cat , wishy-washy , that baby seems to be getting uglier and uglier. All of these are examples of reduplication in the English language, and they are so common that we seldom stop to think that we're really duplicating a whole element or part of it. Reduplication happens in all languages, including Spanish. It can be classified into two main categories: complete (a whole word is replicated) and partial reduplication (a part of a word is replicated). The category that is the juiciest in Spanish is the one that uses whole words, but for the sake of completeness, examples of words that duplicate an element and not a whole word in Spanish are: "un notici on ón", "chiqu it ito", "grand o