寻找适合你的 英语 教师…
Yusuke
Is "I'm a Japanese" grammatically wrong? I heard I'm a Japanese is wrong but I'm Japanese. On the other hand, I heard both I'm an American and I'm American are okay. That doesn't make sence to me...Does anyone happen to know about it? Thank you in advance.
2020年5月26日 21:19
回答 · 2
4
It’s not grammatically wrong (“a Japanese” is the one and only demonym for a person from Japan), but the trend in recent decades is to avoid using nationality words ending in “-ese” as nouns. It just sounds a little awkward nowadays, and some overly sensitive people may eveb think it sounds somehow “racist” or something like that. I’d recommend that you just use the adjective.
2020年5月26日
1
Hi Yusuke, I’d expand on Phil’s good answer by saying that English is weird about demonym (people-naming, like nationality word) suffixes that aren’t -ian or -an. -ese and -ish and -ch all make nouns that sound off, although they’re fine as adjectives: “I’m a Japanese” sounds wrong in the same way “I’m a French” or even, ironically, “I’m an English” does. (This is how I’d answer any objections on the grounds of racism: it’s just what suffix the language assigns you, not something about your ethnicity.) But the solution in all these cases is to add “man” or “person” to the demonym, and make it an adjective: Englishman/woman, Frenchman/woman. “I’m a Japanese man/woman/person”.
2020年5月27日
还未找到你的答案吗?
把你的问题写下来,让母语人士来帮助你!

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn a language from the comfort of your own home. Browse our selection of experienced language tutors and enroll in your first lesson now!