Gentilicios del mundo
Nouns and adjectives of nationality are an interesting part of Spanish. Most Spanish speakers learn them as they speak the language, hear the forms used or see them in written form. However, many don’t know what the nouns and adjectives of nationality are for many countries, cities, towns etc simply due to the fact that they are rare, they have never heard them used before or there is not one. In Spanish, when there isn’t an official noun and adjective of nationality people usually say a person is from xxx, or a native of xxx or a similar phrase along those lines. However, there are trends in the formation of the correct noun and adjective and that’s what most people go by instinctively but there are many irregularities.
Basically, the noun and adjective are formed by the name of country, city or town + a suffix in Spanish. Certain suffixes are associates with 'los gentilicios' more so than others and even –ero/ era are used which usually designates a profession. However, there are 'gentilicios with this suffix and two that comes to mind right away is el habanero, a man from Havana, Cuba or el santiaguero, a man from Santiago, DR.
The reason why I finally decided to start a thread on this (and I thought of it before but always considered the time factor and the need to gather my thoughts in my own words) is because the newspapers use them a lot especially in the Sports section (deportes.) Lately, I have came across a few that I have not heard before simply because I don’t live near those areas or I was unfamiliar with the name or location of the city. Two were easy to decipher what the corresponding city was but one I had to look up because I was not familiar with the name of the city at all. The nouns/ adjectives were: el mostole?o (a man from M?stoles, Spain), el asturiano, this one was easy, a man from Asturias, Spain and el manchego, a man from La Mancha (a region of Spain). In sports commentary, I noticed many writers refer to the players first by their nationality then by their name at least in soccer more so than other sports. For example, el brasile?o, Dani Alves, or el camerun?s, Samuel Eto’o, or el portugu?s, Cristiano Ronaldo etc.
Here are two links that I like that have a list of gentilicios in Spanish and as good as they are, they obviously don’t have every city, town, or region in the world but they are a good start. One link also shows the trend in the endings by comparing the ending of the name of the city, town, region etc and what the typical Spanish suffix would be in each case. The links are from an online professor from Chile.
Formacin de gentilicios
Gentilicios del mundo
Do you know all the Dominican ones without looking them up? Challenge yourself, how many do you know? As well, nouns and adjectives of nationality are a challenge in English too. Sometimes it becomes a guessing game but the internet is a great resource for this type of information.
-MP.
