Nationalities

Vocabulary

1. Nationalities

2. Nationalities in English

When we want to refer to a person's nationality or the origin of something, we usually use an adjective, formed by adding a suffix to the name of the country, region, continent... The most common suffixes are: -an, -ese, -ish, -ch or -i.

• Adjectives related to the continents:
  
  

  They are from Asia. They are Asian.

  

  They are from America. They are American.

  

  They are from Europe. They are European.

  

  They are from Africa. They are African.
• Adjetivos relacionados con países:

  

• When we want to refer to the origin of something, we use the same adjective that applies to a person.
  
  

  I love Chinese food.

  

  My father is drinking an Irish coffee.
• When we want to mention the inhabitants of a country we usually use the adjective of nationality followed by person, man, woman..., if we refer to only one person; or people, men, women..., if we refer to more than one.
  
  

  A Japanese man has broken the world record.

  

  Two Japanese people were robbed yesterday while they were sightseeing.
• When we want to refer to a group of people of a certain nationality, we use either the article the before the nationality, or the nationality followed by the word people. When the suffix is -an, among others, the article can be omitted. They may also be followed by the word people.
  
  

  The Chinese / Chinese people have a totally different culture.

  

  (The) Germans / German people tend to have a strong character.
• There are certain countries that have a specific word for their inhabitants:
  

  COUNTRY	ADJECTIVE	INHABITANT
  Britain	British	A Briton
  Denmark	Danish	A Dane
  Finland	Finnish	A Finn
  Poland	Polish	A Pole
  Spain	Spanish	A Spaniard
  Sweden	Swedish	A Swede
  Turkey	Turkish	A Turk

  

  The new manager is a Danish person / Dane.

  

  We share our flat with a Spaniard / Spanish person.

  In English, nationalities are always written in capital letters.

  You can see more examples on this subject by consulting this list.

Remember!