B. Adjectives

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 633.

Countries, nationalities and languages

Grammar Focus

Part 2 It's a small world

World quiz

1 What are the main ethnic groups in Malaysia?

2 Which countries, strictly speaking, are in Scandinavia?

3 What are the five countries with the highest population?

4 How many languages are there in the world?

5 Where is Kiribati?

6 Where do people speak Inuit?

7 What are the five most widely spoken languages?

A.Using 'the'

Most names of countries are used without 'the', but some countries and other names have 'the' before them, e.g. The USA, The United Kingdom / UK, The Commonwealth.

Some countries may be referred to with or without 'the' (the) Lebanon, (the) Gambia, (the) Ukraine, (the) Sudan.

Adjectives referring to countries and languages

With -ish: British Irish Flemish Danish Turkish Spanish

With -(i)an: Canadian Brazilian American Russian Australian

With -ese: Japanese Chinese Guyanese Burmese Maltese Taiwanese With |j: Israeli Iraqi Kuwaiti Pakistani Yemeni Bangladeshi

With -ic: Icelandic Arabic Some, adjectives are worth learning separately e.g. Swiss, Thai, Greek, Dutch, Cypriot.

Nationalities

Some nationalities have nouns for referring to people, e.g. a Finn, a Swede, a Turk, a Spaniard, a Dane, a Briton, an Arab.

For most nationalities we can use the adjective as a noun, e.g. a German, an Italian, a Belgian, a Catalan, a Greek, an African.

Some need woman/man/person added to them (you can't say 'a Dutch'), so if in doubt, use them, e.g. a Dutch man, a French woman, an Irish person, an Icelandic man.