Eli5: What determines if a nationality ends with -ese (chinese, japanese…), -an (Ghanian, Egyptian, American) or just the county itself (Thai)?
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There is no recognizable rule for the normal language user. They only have a phonotactic feeling – and lexical knowledge. Derivation does not follow specific, strict rules – in every language. It has a set of affixes which can sometimes be applied on the same word or stem or root which also proves that it is not merely a matter of morphonology, but at best of phonotactic restrictions. Country names are foreign words, therefore often disrespect the syllable structure of the language using this word as a morphological base, and so, restrictions arise, and alternatives are preferred.
On a similar note, why are people from Canada called “Canadian” with an “i” but people from Sparta are called Spartans with no “i?” Where does the “i” come from? People from Nevada are Nevadans afaik, not Nevadians.
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