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tophat212 t1_j67qvsk wrote

The author of that tweet came from London.

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HeWhoFistsGoats t1_j67u56z wrote

Of course they do.

For what it's worth, this problem wouldn't happen in French. It's perfectly acceptable to say "les traitres, les fourbes, les perfides, les anglais".

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total_alk t1_j69dynj wrote

I don't understand how English works--and I'm a native speaker. It's perfectly proper English to say "The French", "The English", or "The Dutch" when referring to the people of those countries. But it is not proper English to say "The American", "The German", "The Canadian" when referring to people of those countries. Am I missing something? Is it a simple matter of the words ending in an "h" vs. "n"?

The grammar is confusing.

Edit: to be clear, my comment is about grammar, not whether it is appropriate to use those terms to refer to people groups.

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BuffaloInCahoots t1_j69elnr wrote

Not sure what the rule is but they usually have a word after. The American people/gov or just the Americans. The H thing is interesting though, Americans or Germans is right but Frenchs is mustard and Englishs sound like Golem.

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BaconIsAVeg2 t1_j6bsx8p wrote

> But it is not proper English to say "The American", "The German", "The Canadian" when referring to people of those countries.

You can absolutely say "the Americans and the Canadians fought the Germans during WWII".

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QuantumTea t1_j6a3lqh wrote

I hadn’t thought about it before, but it does have to do with the ending. Nationalities ending in ‘-n’ get an ‘-s’ added to them, and I think all of the others don’t (at least the ones I could think of).

Examples German - the Germans French - the French English - the English Japanese - the Japanese Swiss- the Swiss

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there are exceptions though (like everything else in English).

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