What's the rule for which 'national identity adjective' suffix to use?
What's the rule for which 'national identity adjective' suffix to use?
[-ish] Ireland, Scotland = Irish, Scottish
[-an] Morocco, Germany = Moroccan, German
[-ese] Portugal, China = Portuguese, Chinese
What rule is at play here? 🤔
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Netherlands = Dutch
When I was a kid our family went on vacation to the US. Everyone kept asking if I was Dutch, which I thought was German (Deutsch).
So I kept correcting them, saying I was Netherlandish :)Deutsch is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is German
If you mean that Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German and that Dutch and Deutsch share a common origin, then that is true.
Also, in Deutschland, the descendents of the Alemmani are called Germans for some awful reason.
So I take it that's why it's Allemagne?
The German people, as a people, started as the unification of the Germanic tribes. The unified tribe called itself the tribe of all men, Alle Männer in modern German. The history of those times is narrated by romans and Greeks so we have a romanised version of that name, alamanni.
Aha! Hence, the French “Allemand(e)” for “German”.
TIL. Pretty neat!