Nationalities
Nationality words tell us where a person or thing comes from. They can describe a person, a thing, or a language:
- a person: She is Italian.
- a thing: Italian food
- a language: She speaks Italian.
Nationality words always begin with a capital letter.
Nationality adjectives
We use a nationality adjective after be or before a noun:
- He is Canadian.
- They bought a German car.
- We ate at an Italian restaurant.
Names for people
Sometimes the nationality adjective and the word for a person have the same form:
- Canadian → a Canadian
- Italian → an Italian
- German → a German
- Australian → an Australian
Sometimes they are different:
- Finnish → a Finn
- Swedish → a Swede
- Danish → a Dane
- Spanish → a Spaniard
- Icelandic → an Icelander
With some nationality adjectives, we normally use person:
- a British person
- a French person
- a Chinese person
- a Japanese person
- a Swiss person
Languages
The language often has the same name as the nationality adjective:
- English, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Portuguese
But not every nationality adjective is also a language name. For example, people speak English or French in Canada, not Canadian.
Common endings
Nationality adjectives often follow these spelling patterns. They are useful clues, but they are not complete rules.
→ -an, -ian, -ean
- America → American
- Canada → Canadian
- Italy → Italian
- Brazil → Brazilian
- Korea → Korean
- Africa → African
→ -ish
- Britain → British
- Poland → Polish
- Spain → Spanish
- Turkey → Turkish
- Sweden → Swedish
→ -ese
- China → Chinese
- Japan → Japanese
- Portugal → Portuguese
- Vietnam → Vietnamese
- Lebanon → Lebanese
→ -i
- Iraq → Iraqi
- Israel → Israeli
- Pakistan → Pakistani
- Kuwait → Kuwaiti
- Yemen → Yemeni
Other and irregular forms
- France → French
- Greece → Greek
- the Netherlands → Dutch
- Switzerland → Swiss
- Czechia → Czech
