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? 🤔

Cheers!

You're viewing a single thread.

96 comments

I can tell you that this is called demonym, but I don't know the answer to your question... The Wikipedia page has a long list of suffixes, but no rules: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym
- The answer is that many languages import their demonyms from different foreign languages. The reason for the inconsistencies is the different, unrelated sources for words.

96 comments