As in Mexican, Canadian, Balinese, Muscovite, when describing someone’s nationality or ethnicity in english? How do you know which suffix to use to specific nationality?
In: 443
The rules of origin of these is too complicated to remember, so if you do not remember the precise form, just work around it. Mexican and Canadian are the ones you know for sure, because you heard it thousand times. Suddenly you see someone from Burkina Faso? Maybe its safe to say “person from Burkina Faso” than trying to come up with Burkinese, Fasoian or whatever your mind goes to. Or just Google it, to be sure.
Yeah there’s no set rule that I know if. You just learn the correct suffix as you learn the word.
As a native speaker, I’m sorry. It depends on the last letter of the place, with a healthy dose of “that’s just how we say it”. If in doubt, use -n/ -an/ -ian. Even if it’s not technically correct, you will be understood. For example, Hawaiian, Asian, Californian, New Jersian, Syrian, and so forth. Use the same rules for plurals (eg Jersey to Jersi + an). If the place ends in an n or m, -ite is more common. Wisconsinite, Gothamite.
-ese is mostly used for language groups, I have no idea why. But Japan turns into Japanese, whether you are referring to the people or the language. Vietnamese and Portuguese are the same.
It is more variable than many aspects of English grammar because how people refer to themselves often gets co-opted into English regardless of its original grammar. For example, Hawaii uses the only -ii in English off the top of my head. But that’s how the native speakers transliterated their name, so we agreed then tacked on the familiar -ian ending to make Hawaiian.
The basic answer is “they all mean the same thing so it isn’t really more or less correct to use one or the other.” These endings eventually get back to Latin in some form meaning, essentially, “referring to an origin”. (See Etymology.com for more on these endings but summarizing some points below as well.)
English Portuguese Spanish and French colonies may have used certain endings depending on all sorts of things (how literate the writer, how people pronounced things in the area, how one European country promounced another European language — The English were particularly fond of using their own rules of pronunciation so that the poem “Don Juan” would’ve been read as “Don Joo-on”. (We know this bc the poem has a certain beat that works with that pronunciation not the Italian/Spanish pronunciation).
Anyway. Language is fun.
Using -n or -ese tends to work for names ending in a vowel. Most countries fit that rule.
-ian requires you drop the last vowel so it might work better for Brazil than for Mexico. (Hence Mexican not Mexician)
You don’t. You learn the word. Demonyms are really just conventions because they entered the language at different times, from different languages, through different channels, and then were mounded, shaped, squeezed and beaten half to death to fit the use in English. So you just learn that someone from Mexico is a Mexican, someone from Brazil is Brazilian, someone from the Netherlands is Dutch etc
What you’re describing are known as demonyms, AKA words for a people or nation. The names can come from a lot of different sources:
* -ish has Germanic roots, and is generally used to describe place names that the English have known about since the Early Middle Ages, when the English language had a far more Germanic vocabulary.
* -ese comes from Latin via French, and has a lot of cognates in Romance languages like Portuguese or Italian. The reason a lot of East Asian names use this (Chinese, Japanese, etc.) is because a lot of explorers and travelers to East Asia were Portuguese, and the names entered English via reports from Portugal.
* -an and -ian come from Latin, so they’re generally used to describe names that either come from Latin, or are at least pseudo-Latin sounding.
* -ic also comes from Latin, and is also used to describe place names with Greek or Latin roots. Why do some use -ic while some use -ian? Probably because that’s what the Romans did and we just copied that.
* -ite comes from ancient Greek via Latin. It’s uncommon nowadays, and generally only sees use today as a deliberate neologism (e.g., “Brooklynite”).
* -i comes from words adopted from Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic (Israeli, Omani, etc.).
And then there are a lot of exceptions, generally because we adopted the word straight from another language and didn’t change it too much (e.g., “Greek” coming from Latin *graecus*).
#Edit:
About the etymologies that people keep asking about in the replies:
* **Greek:** From Latin “Graecus.”
* **French:** From Old English “Frencisċ” (Frankish). The -isċ evolved into the modern English -ish.
* **Michigander:** Deliberate pun on the word “gander” (as in a male goose).
* **Norwegian:** From the medieval Latin name for Norway, “Norvegia.”
* **Glaswegian:** A pun by the people of Glasgow based on “Galwegian,” which itself was a pun by the people of Galway based on “Norwegian.”
* **Haligonian:** Based on a legend that the town of Halifax’s Old English name as “halig feax” (holy hair).
* **Corfiot:** Based on the word “Cypriot,” from the Greek “Κυπριώτης” (*Kupriótis*), to describe someone from Cyprus. Ironically enough, not used in Greek, because the Greek name of the island of Corfu is Kerkyra.
This problem is not unique to English. Try learning and remembering all the demonyms of Romance languages.
Puerto Rican and Costa Rican. Guatemalan and Venezuelan. Just add n! Easy!
But in Spanish, puertorriqueño and costarricense, and guatemalteco and venezolano.
I’m currently learning Spanish, and am having the same issues with word genders and verb suffixes. Frustrating!
You can’t conjugate it. You just learn the name for the citizens of a place. New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Ohioans, Oaklanders, Parisians… it’s arbitrary but easy to offend when wrong.
Not a native speaker, but rather fluent and heres my answer: dunno, same as any other english rule, dunno any of the grammar rules, but im able to speak and use metaphors and similies. How do i use them, based on what rules? Dunno, i just know the correct form, or i can assume the correct form/term based on other words with similar structure/phoenetics.
The pleasure of learning english from tv, the web and video games.
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