In the comments of the previous post, Alan notices my weird use of the word ‘sookies’:
“…but I think that one is a “sook” or, worse, sookie-baby but either “sooks” or “sookie-babies”. I have never heard the “sookie” as plural.”
I’m surprised to find that the word ‘sook’ does not exist in the renown Cambridge and M-W dictionaries, however, Wikipedia refers me to the word ‘souk’. And as Alan already suggested (and the better-half just confirmed) the correct plural would have been ‘sookie-babies’.
I have the impression that my ‘pluralizer’ language module is broken. Not broken actually, I suspect my Dutch language module has the tendency to ‘make every noun smaller’ to enforce its cuteness. Dutch language speakers know exactly what I mean by that.
Take the Dutch word ‘kind’ (child) for example. Adding the ‘je’/’tje’ (plural would be ‘-jes/-tjes’) to that word makes it ‘kindje’ which (literally) means ‘smaller child’. There’s no real or logical reason to this, except for (as mentioned before) to express that something is really cute. In a way, yes, in Dutch, it can also be used to ‘belittle’ people. Don’t be surprised if you walk in a supermarket and your name is being mangled with an extra ‘tje’ or ‘je’.
Maybe it’s almost the same as how English allows to add ‘ey’ /’y’/’ee’/’ie’ to words like ‘kid’ or ‘dog’. But then, maybe not: I’ve never heard people say ‘treeyee’ (as in small little cute tree) whereas in Dutch a ‘boom’ (tree) can be easily transformed into a little tree by calling it a ‘boompje’.
Literally, in Dutch , no chainsaw is needed to make that possible.
I recall a polite way of responding to the inevitable offer of more food or coffee or drink was “a little bit” or “bitjie”. That is how much I speak Dutch.