Learn Spanish (Latin America): Caminamos muy despacito un ratito.

Caminamos muy despacito un ratito.

We walk very slowly for a little while.

Breakdown of Caminamos muy despacito un ratito.

Questions & Answers about Caminamos muy despacito un ratito.

Why is it despacito instead of just despacio?

Adding -ito to the word despacio (slowly) softens it and adds a friendly, casual tone. While despacio just means slowly, despacito often translates to something like nice and slow. It is extremely common in Latin America to use diminutives this way to make a sentence sound warmer or more relaxed.

What is the base word for ratito?

The base word is rato, which means a while or a bit of time. By changing the ending to -ito, it becomes ratito, meaning a little while or a short moment. You will hear un ratito constantly in spoken Spanish to show that something will not take very much time.

You can put -ito on words that describe how we do things, like despacio? I thought it was just for physical things!

Good catch! While diminutives are most often added to nouns (like perrito for a little dog), Latin American speakers love to add them to adverbs (words that describe actions) too. For example, ahora (now) often becomes ahorita, and cerca (close) becomes cerquita.

Could caminamos also mean we walked in the past tense?