Job Discussion Forums

[rogan]

Henry,

Doesn't this seem a little odd ?

must usually be preceded by the.

[Henry_Cowell]

Gregor's additional insights are of course spot on. Thanks!

To think that some English instructors don't know the basic features of nouns and adjectives is a bit astonishing.

[isanity]

What's sad, though hardly astonishing, is that teachers fob their students off with this kind of half-baked explanation.

[Henry_Cowell]

It's the explanation that is in dictionaries and usage books.

Please show us an authentic source that maintains that "The British drink tea" is actually a short-hand way of saying "The British people drink tea" and that the word British is hence a "dubious" noun that is really an adjective. Please show us an authentic source that defines the category dubious noun for this type of situation.

Please.

[isanity]

[Henry_Cowell]

[Gregor]

The only real PROBLEM I can see with using the nationality adjective as nouns without "the" is when you use one that isn't obviously a noun. Back to the OP, the reason it sounded strange is because it sounds like an adjective where you need a noun.

"Americans fight wars; Swiss do not."
This sounds wrong because Americans is obviously (to our ears) a noun because of the plural form. I would submit (though I'm not sure of this) that using "Americans" in this way may not be STRICTLY correct. You should usually use "the." It's certainly more consistent from the students' point of view.

I also admit that "Americans" and "the Americans" have a slightly different connotation. Using "the" makes it all-inclusive - or at least the general rule. But what if you want to imply...again, this is really high level for a student - I've never had a student I'd want to discuss this with...but what if you want to imply that something is a characteristic of some of the people in a country, maybe BECAUSE they are from that country, but it's far from all-inclusive?
"Americans eat a lot of beef." This is less acusatory than saying that "The Americans eat a lot of beef," whether or not it's true. The point is, what tone do you want to take? There's only a slight difference in meaning, but you have that choice when the nationality allows for the plural form.
We simply can't do that with Swiss. I know nothing about the Swiss or Switzerland, so a good example is hard co come by, but how about "Swiss people eat a lot of cheese." That just sounds like fewer people to me than "The Swiss eat a lot of cheese."

But how much of this should we tell our students? Almost none. What I do is, at lower levels, "both the Americans and American people are correct. Same as with all other nationalities." At the higher levels, "Americans in fine alone, Chinese is OK sometimes and Swiss, never. Why? Sounds wrong. Trust your ear."

[johnchina]

On a related point, many (most?) of my Chinese students insist on saying "a chinese" , as in "I am a Chinese".

[isanity]

Irritates the hell out of me, but it's not really fair to complain when there's no reasonably short alternative (and Chinaman dosn't go down too well these days).

[johnchina]

Agreed that China(wo)man would be awful, but it doesn't take much effort to say/write "a Chinese person" or "from China".

[khmerhit]

The Thais sell the rice.

The Laotians plant the rice.

The Cambodians listen to the rice growing.




Wow, you grammarians need a holiday-----a holiday in

cambodia

[Gregor]

Grammar's fun.
So are the Dead Kennedys.

[Henry_Cowell]