4 Names of countries, people and language
In English, the words ‘English’, ‘French’, ‘Spanish’, etc. are used not only to designate language and a person’s nationality but can also function as adjectives in front of nouns (e.g. ‘English newspaper’, ‘French poet’, ‘Spanish city’). In Chinese, however, a distinction is made. As you have already seen, the character wén 文 is added to a country name to designate language and the character rén 人 to designate a person. When associating a country with anything else, however, you use just the country name in front of the noun in question, as shown in the table below. In these examples, the country name functions as an adjective.
| Country names as adjectives | Languages | People |
|---|---|---|
Zhōngguó wénxué 中国文学 Chinese literature |
zhōngwén 中文 Chinese |
zhōngguórén 中国人 Chinese person/people |
Xībānyá diànyĭng 西班牙电影 Spanish film |
xībānyáwén 西班牙文 Spanish |
xībānyárén 西班牙人 Spaniard |
Note that there can be some ambiguity when saying something like:
Zhōngguó xiăoshuō 中国小说 a Chinese novel
In this example, it could be that the novel is in the Chinese language, but it could also be that it was originally written by a Chinese writer but has been translated into another language. The ambiguity is removed if the language name rather than the country name is placed before the noun.
zhōngwén xiăoshuō 中文小说 a novel in Chinese
Activity 5
Choose the English words that correspond to the underlined characters (forms).
a.
Chinese people
b.
China
The correct answer is b.
a.
Chinese
b.
China
The correct answer is a.
a.
French
b.
France
The correct answer is a.