Ahorita

Some of you may know that in Spanish you can form the belittlement (shame on me if it is the wrong word; looked in up on LEO) by adding -ito or -ita to a word (depending on whether it is male of female). Example: el dibujo (the drawing) - el dibujito (the little drawing); la casa (the house) - la casita (the little house)

But it is not only to "transform" nouns by this way. It also works with adverbs. One of my favourits and very often used in Mexico: ahorita! Ahora means now, so little now. Very helpful for example when your boss asks you to do something... to be honest it is very difficult to explain in English or German what it really means. My trial: not exactly now but soon (where soon can be between "in 5 minutes" and "during the next week"). It guess it is also a cultural thing;-)

When I told my colleagues at work that we don't rally have a word for this in German (except for maybe in Schwaben) they asked me: "But how do you say ahorita then?" And they hardly believed me when I explained that it is either now (jetzt, sofort) or soon (gleich).