Countries, nationalities and languages

Área Lectura y Escritura

Resultados de aprendizaje
Conocer gentilicios, países e idiomas en inglés.
Utilizar gentilicios e idiomas en contextos de escritura formal.

Contenidos

1. General vocabulary words

Debo saber

- Simple present
- Present continuous
- Simple past
- Past continuous
Countries, nationalities and languages
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,
and (the) Sudan. Remember that ‘the’ is normally used to refer to specific conglomerates or
organizations.

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 –i: Israeli / Iraqi / Kuwaiti / Pakistani / Yemeni / Bangladeshi
- With –ic: Icelandic / Arabic
Some, adjectives are worth learning separately. E.g Swiss, Thai, Greek, Dutch, Cypriot. Remember
that all adjectives referring to countries and languages are written in capital letters.

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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, and Icelandic man. Remember that the indefinite article is used when singular general
nouns.

World regions

Peoples and races

People belong to ethnic groups and regional groups such as Afro – Caribbean, Asians and Orientals
and Latin Americans. What are you? (E.g. North African, Southern African, European, Melanesian)

They speak dialects as well as languages. Everyone has a mother tongue or first language; many
have second and third languages. Some people are perfect in more than one language and are
bilingual or multilingual.

- Name: Wanija Krishnamurthan

- Nationality: Malaysian
- Mother tongue: Tamil (S. India)
- Second / third languages: English, Malay
- Type of dialect of English: Malaysian
- Ethnic group: Asian (Tamil Indian)

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 Exercises
1. Ways of learning nationality and language adjectives. Some adjectives an form regional
groups, e.g. Latin American countries are almost all described by –(i) an adjectives.

a. Complete this list of Latin American adjectives. Look at a world map if you have to.
Brazilian, Chilean,
b. The same applies to former European socialist countries and parts of the former
Socialist Union. Complete this list. Hungarian, Armenian, …
c. What other regional groupings can you see on the left – hand page? (e.g. many – ish
adjectives are European)

2. Famous names. Can you name a famous …

Example: Argentinian sportsman or woman? Diego Maradonna
a. Chinese politician?
b. Black Southern African political figure?
c. Polish person who became a world religious leader?
d. Italian opera singer?
e. Irish rock – music group?

3. Correct the mistakes in these newspaper headlines

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 4. World quiz

a. What are the main ethnic groups in Malaysia?

b. Which countries, strictly speaking, are in Scandinavia?
c. What are the five countries with the highest population?
d. How many languages are there in the world?
e. Where is Kiribati?
f. Where do people speak Inuit?
g. What are the five most widely spoken languages?

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 Key
1. Ways of learning nationality and language adjectives. Some adjectives an form regional
groups, e.g. Latin American countries are almost all described by –(i) an adjectives.

a. Argentinian, Venezuelan, Costa Rican, Panamanian, Mexican, Peruvian, Ecuadorian,

Bolivian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, etc.
b. Ukrainian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Albanian, Mongolian,
Moldavian, Hungarian, etc.
c. Other groupings: - i adjectives seem to be Middle Eastern or Muslim countries (except
Israeli); three of the –ese adjectives are oriental.

2. Famous names. Can you name a famous …

a. Mao – Tse Tung
b. Nelson or Winnie Mandela
c. Pope John Paull II
d. Luciano Pavarotti
e. U2

3. Correct the mistakes in these newspaper headlines

a. Madonna to marry a Frenchman? Hollywood sensation!

b. Britons have highest tax rate in EC.
c. Vietnamese refugees leave Hong Kong camps
d. Police arrest Dane on smuggling charge
e. Iraqi delegation meets Pakistani president

4. World quiz

a. Malays, Chinese (or various ethnic sub – types), and Indians (many are Tamils and
Sikhs).
b. If we take Scandinavia as strictly the geographical peninsula, then Sweden and Norway
are the only countries completely in Scandinavia. If we consider it more as a language

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 family, then Denmark and Iceland can be added, and if as a cultural family, then Finland
can be added too.
c. Approximate populations are China: 975,000,000; India: 638,000,000; USA:
218,000,000; Indonesia: 141,000,000; Brazil: 116,000,000. The former Soviet Union
used to be third, with 260,000,000 (source: The Times Atlas).
d. A difficult question! However, most linguists seem to agree on around 5,000 mutually
incomprehensible tongues. There are, of course, many more dialects.
e. Kiribati is an independent country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It has only about
57,000 people.
f. Inuit is an Eskimo language, and its speakers may be found in Northern Canada.
g. Languages most widely spoken, in the following order, are Chinese, English, Spanish,
Hindi, Arabic (source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language CUP)

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