Ask HN: Why can't I call myself “a Japanese”?

Re:Ask HN: Why can't I call myself “a Japanese”? by silisili on Thursday October 07, 2021 @07:53PM (#28793713)

I'm not sure... I was giving it some thought and it seems to me to be more the construction of the word itself.

Maltese, Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, English, French - AFAICT only used as adjectives.

Canadian, American, Mexican, German, Russian, Nigerian - adjective or noun.

I'm not even trying to touch on appropriateness, just the general rules on how words are used/spelled. Something about 'an' makes it sound natural to use as a noun.

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Re:Ask HN: Why can't I call myself “a Japanese”? by schoen on Thursday October 07, 2021 @08:21PM (#28793973)

For "English" and "French" we would usually add "-man" or "-woman" ("an Englishman", "a Frenchman"), although people have worried for some decades that the required qualification by sex is too specific.

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