I’m not entirely sure but I think that’s the name of the concept I’m asking about, diminutivization.
I’m curious about the changes made to words to make them cuter, and not necessarily just cuter, but to give them an expression of sorts.
One Japanese example I can think of is changing ‘s’ sounds to ‘ch’ sounds. It makes the speech more like you’re talking baby language or maybe making fun of someone you see as childish. ‘です’ becomes ‘でちゅ’. More well known example is probably Sanji from One Piece changing ‘さん’ to ‘ちゅあん’.
In Swiss German a lot of time it’s done by adding ‘-li’ to the end of a word. ‘Kind’ is kid, ‘kindli’ is more ‘little kid’, ‘cute kid’. You can do it for most nouns I think.
I have also seen in Japanese where onomatopoeic words like ‘ハムハム’ for ‘nibbling’ become ‘ハミハミ’ when the intent is to make it cuter.
Is there a better name for this function? And, does anyone know any good resources to learn about it? I figure it’s most likely something you need to grow up around but would still be cool to learn more.