amatino

This word is three pieces and every piece is doing work. Ami is to love. -At- is the present passive participle - the one that marks the receiving end of the verb. -In- makes it female. Put them together and you get she who is being loved, which is a rather more precise thing than English girlfriend says out loud.

The contrast that makes the participle click is amanto against amato. -Ant- is active, so an amanto is the one doing the loving, a lover. -At- is passive, so an amato is the one being loved, a beloved. Both are ordinary participial nominals and both are built by rule, and once you can feel the difference between those two words you have the whole participle system in your hand. Amatino is simply amato with the gender marked.

Against koramiko it is a matter of register. Koramiko and koramikino are relationship labels - the person you are going out with, the one you would introduce as such. Amatino is a feeling label, older and warmer and slightly literary, closer to sweetheart or beloved than to girlfriend. Both are perfectly current; koramikino is what you would put on a form and amatino is what turns up in a song.

One last note on -in-. It is added only when the sex is worth saying, so amato covers a man or an unspecified person and needs no apology for it. That is the general habit of the suffix across the language, and it is why amatino reads as a deliberate choice rather than the default.