Quora
Stories from your activity
I am American. I am an American. Which one is correct? Can I say " I'm a
Chinese."? Is that right?
Darren McSweeney
Darren McSweeney, English speaking from birth until today...
Updated Aug 15, 2019
The words we are talking about are called demonyms. You can say I am American
and I am an American, because the word American is both a noun and adjective.
The same goes with Australian or German or Canadian or African or Asian.
Unfortunately, there are many nationalities which are adjectives only, and
cannot be used as a noun. Any that end with -sh or -ese fall into this
category. So you can say I am Chinese or I am English or I am French, but you
cannot say I am an English, or I am a Chinese or I am a French. You need to
add another word (like man, citizen, person) to the adjective nationality: I
am a Chinese citizen, I am an Englishman, I am a French person.