[-ish] Ireland, Scotland = Irish, Scottish
[-an] Morocco, Germany = Moroccan, German
[-ese] Portugal, China = Portuguese, Chinese
What rule is at play here? 🤔
Cheers!
Netherlands = Dutch
The English Language, where the grammar is made up and the rules don’t matter.
I can add:
[-er] New Zealander
Or just a different word completely. Dutch.
Pfft. The Dutch…
Odd way to spell Kiwi but you do you pal
Booo I’ma still say New Zealish
New Zealot
Newfoundlander
Demonyms don’t follow any particular rules, as far as I know. I’m an “-egian” myself.
I’m in Michigan, that makes me a Michigander. The rules are made up and the suffixes don’t matter.
I’m from South Dakota, I’m South Dakotant. It is what it is.
Do you change the emphasis? da-ko-TANT?
Emphasis still on KO
I’m a Connecticutian by birth. Though I’ve also heard someone call themselves Connecticuter once or twice, but never cared for that one.
Either one seems to break a lot of normal grammar/spelling rules.
We’re all Earthicans, no need to divide it up further than that
Denmark -> Dane
I guess that actually the other way around, Denmark : Dane’s field/farm(there is a better English word for mark but can’t remember)
Netherlands → Dutch
No wonder Euros say they don’t exist.
Dutch is such a weird one. We don’t call ourselves “Dutch” in Dutch, we call ourselves “Nederlands”. This would be something like “Netherlandish” in English. We do call Germans “Duits” though, and they call themselves “Deutsch”. Somehow in English German and Dutch got a bit messed up. The reason is probably that during the middle ages we did refer to our language as “Dietsch”, so that probably stayed around.
It’s because Germany wasn’t a unified place until not that long ago, so different neighbors came up with their own way to refer to them.
Dutch is the English name for the dominant language of the Netherlands, and in English we often name people after their language. The Netherlands is also called Holland in English, even though Holland is just the most economically-dominant sub-region of the Netherlands, and the location of its main trading ports, rather than the whole country. Which makes sense if you are an English sailor who only knows the Netherlands through its trading ports and has little need to go inland.
But we also don’t call our language “Dutch”, we call it Nederlands. It’s a relic of an old time, but actually German should be called Dutch and Dutch should be Netherlandish. It’d help a lot with the confusion of young German and Dutch people learning English for the first time haha. Would also resolve the confusion around “Pennsylvanian Dutch” being German.
Yes, you are right. I had never put it together that Dutch and Deutch are so close, but it’s obvious now that you pointed it out. Thanks for the info.
Lol I wasn’t aware of that being a thing, here in Germany we usually only say that Bielefeld (a German city) doesn’t exist.
But isn’t Dane a noun? I thought the adjective was danish.
Yes you’re right , the Danes are Danish
Danish. Also doubles as the name of a tasty pastry.
Find what sounds most natural, if that can’t be found, go with what sounds the least catastrophically unnatural.
Americaneseish.
Meanwhile there is no specific demonym for people from the united states, you can say american buy that would also include every other north and south american country
Literally nobody who isn’t a Latin American with a chip on their shoulder has a problem distinguishing Americans from “people who live on either north or south america”
Nobody calls Mexicans or Canadians Americans. Nobody calls Brazilians or Peruvians Americans. They maybe North Americans and South Americans but American means someone from the United States. The Canadians and Mexicans I know would be offended if I called them American.
I think the rest of the world calls them Freedum Dolts.
Seppos
There is no rule. It just is whatever it is.
There is a Words For Granted podcast episode about that. Don’t remember much tho. Have fun!
Ray Belli is amazing and I’ve failed to learn so many things from his podcast because as soon as he starts speaking my mind wanders. It’s like the audio version of reading the same paragraph four times because my brain decides to think about something else while my eyes move across the page
Afghani, Pakistani,
FYI, there’s a little debate over this in the English language, but many would say that the proper demonyms are Afghan for the Pashtun ethnic group, and Afghanistani (or rarely Afghanese) for people from Afghanistan regardless of ethnicity.
Afghani is their currency.
I believe it comes from a discrepancy between the Persian and Pashto languages. Afghani being the correct term in Persian, and Afghan being the term in Pashto.
Afghani is pretty widely used in English, and even appears in some dictionaries, but many argue that it’s not correct.
So a person is an Afghan, they eat Afghan food, wear Afghan clothing, have Afghan customs, and their currency is the Afghan Afghani (in case some other country ever adopts a currency called the Afghani and you need to differentiate between them)
I was literally thinking about this yesterday… what’s someone from Belgium called? I couldn’t figure out an ending to add. Belgian?
So Philippines is Philippinese?
