之前網路上流傳一篇似是而非的文章
宣稱所謂英文中ese結尾的民族有貶抑意味
因此鼓勵台灣人不要叫自己Taiwanese而要稱Taiwaner
其實真是天大的笑話...
 
 
根據University of Wisconsin Madison語言學博士Samson Kong分析，

葡萄牙人的英文為Portuguese，法文、義大利文、葡萄牙文等都屬於拉丁語系，名詞分為陰性及陽性。所謂的ese在拉丁文是陰性指的是國家。當初葡萄牙人及其他拉丁語系民族航海到東方，許多東方國家的命名其實都是出自於拉丁語系。
 
例如法文稱中國人為Chinois(e)，法文稱法國人為français(e)，字尾變化其實都出自於拉丁文的ese。

「音樂之都」維也納（Viennese），還有「時裝之都」米蘭（Milanese），還有我最愛吃的米蘭義式燉飯（Risotto  alla Milanese）…!

維也納人稱為Viennese
當地著名的古典音樂家如莫札特、貝多芬被稱為Viennese Classic
維也納圓舞曲稱為Viennese Walts
 
其實也不用大驚小怪，這個詞尾在拉丁語系（包括拉丁文和從它演化而來的各種拉丁「方言」如義大利語、法語、西班牙語、葡萄牙語等）本來就十分普通，它們也用這個詞尾來稱本民族或本民族的東西，如法語裡的française、葡語裡的portuguesa等；義大利各地的人也普遍使用這個詞尾，除了已提到的米蘭，還有Parmese（Parma火腿或Parmesan乳酪的產地）、Genoese（航海家哥倫布的老鄉）等等。

西方文明中地位最崇高的文化名城──希臘的雅典（Athens），在拉丁文裡，就把「雅典人」或「雅典的」，稱為Athēniēnsis ，而-ensis這個詞尾，正是英文-ese詞尾的來源。以下是牛津英語語源詞典的解說：
 
-ese suffix repr. OF. -eis (mod. -ois, -ais) — L. -ēnsis, -ēns-, which meant ‘belonging to, originating in (a place)’, as hortēnsis, f. hortus garden, prātēnsis, f. prātum meadow, and in many adjs. of local names, as Athēniēnsis Athenian, f. Athēnæ Athens. As a living suffix it forms derivs. of names of countries, as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese (F. chinois, japonais, portugais) and from some names of foreign towns, as Cantonese, Viennese. Such adjs. are used sb. as names of languages or as designations of peoples.
 
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | 1996 | T. F. HOAD
 
（註：OF是Old French中古法語，因為英國在中古時代曾被法蘭西北部的諾曼第人統治過，不少拉丁詞根都是經法語轉過去的。L就是Latin，拉丁文）

至於這個詞尾為什麼那麼普遍的用到東方國族身上，也曾有人為文解釋，這裡附貼的是其中說得比較透徹的一篇。其中的語言學解釋大體沒有問題，但其歷史解釋也許不盡符合事實。我相信那主要不是義大利文和馬可波羅的關係，而是地理大發現時代最初一波東來的航海家、天主教傳教士、商人、殖民者等，也都是拉丁民族或用拉丁文的人（如天主教傳教士）為主。

民族、文化的邂逅就是這樣充滿了特別的緣分。

Oct2008 Author: Thomas TsoiIn: Etymology, Morphology, Typology

After posting my other article So many negative prefixes, I received very positive feedback and many readers apparently found the article interesting and useful. Indeed, these little affixes (prefixes and suffixes) can be puzzling when they are similar in meaning but nevertheless non-interchangeable. That makes people ask why they are what they are: is there a subtle rule beneath all the messy superficial distribution, or things just happen by chance?
Not long ago, a friend asked me whether there are rules governing the usage of those suffixes of nationality, such as -ese, -ian and -ish. I thought about it for a while, then I remembered that years ago I read a post on the Internet, saying that -ese is a derogatory ending used only on those countries that the western world thought to be inferior, so we have adjectives like Chinese, Vietnamese and Burmese. After all, many of the Asian countries do form their adjectives in -ese. But I had doubts, don’t the westerners just love Japanese stuff? And why Korean, Indian, Malaysian and Indonesian then? So I decided to look for the answer myself.

I fetched a list of nationality adjectives from NationMaster.com, then I started to color the world map according to the suffixes used to form their respective nationality adjectives. Finally I got this map:

Suffixes of Nationality

From the list, I find 8 major suffixes, they are:

-ian (Italian, Norwegian)

-ean (Chilean, Korean)

-an (American, Mexican)

-ese (Chinese, Japanese)

-er (Icelander, New Zealander)

-ic (Icelandic, Greenlandic)

-ish (English, Irish)

-i (Iraqi, Pakistani)

Looking at the map, we can probably notice some distributive patterns right away. For instance, -ish is mainly used for European nations, -i is for nations in the Middle East, -ic and -er seem to occur only after the word -land, but the others seem to be more random.
Not satisfied with the mere geographical picture, I decided to trace the histories of these suffixes.

-ian / -ean / -an

It should not be surprising to find out that -ian, -an and -ean actually have a common origin. In fact, the suffix -ia is frequently used in Latin to name places, thus giving birth to names like Romania, Bulgaria and Australia, and -ea and -a are two other grammatical suffixes used on Latin nouns. The final -n is an adjectival suffix that turns a noun into an adjective. Hence, adjectives that end in -ian, -ean, or -an were either borrowed directly from Latin, or modelled after Latin in English. They are the standard suffixes now in English. The distribution of them follows a rule that is rather neat and tidy. Basically it goes as follows:

If the place name ends in -ea or a silent -e, then use -ean;

If the place name ends in a vowel, then use -an;

Otherwise, use -ian.

As you have probably noticed, there are some exceptions or complications, but let us not be concerned about that here. After all, the general picture is clear and unambiguous.

-ese

Let us now turn to the controversial suffix -ese. You could well say that there does not seem to be a pattern geographically. Countries using -ese are scattered everywhere in Asia, Africa, South America, and we also have Portugal in Europe! But my attention turns to Italian when I give this suffix some more thought.
In Italian, -ese is a much more common suffix of nationality than in English. Words that use -ese in Italian but not in English include danese (Danish), finlandese (Finnish), francese (French), inglese (English) and islandese (Icelandic). In fact, -ese (from Latin -ēnsis) is the next most common suffix after the Latin triplet -ian/-ean/-an.

The Third Voyage of Christopher Columbus

It turns out that words ending in -ese in English actually come from Italian. Recalling that Marco Polo and other Italian traders were the first Europeans to reach the Far East, it is therefore no surprise that many Asian countries use -ese. In addition, the countries using -ese in South America are all very close to where Christopher Columbus, himself an Italian, first landed on the continent. But of course, why some countries in Africa and the Americas use the Italian suffix, while others use French or Spanish suffixes is a result of their long and complicated colonial histories.

-er / -ic

Both -er and -ic are originally Latin suffixes which later entered the Germanic languages and subsequently English. Among the two hundred countries in the world, -er and -ic are used only after the words land and island, both of which are Germanic in origin. The suffix -er is used on nouns to denote persons of a certain place of origin, while -ic is used to form adjectives with the meaning of “having some characteristics of”. Therefore, Icelander is normally used to denote a person from Iceland (i.e. a noun), whereas Icelandic is used when it is used as an adjective.

-ish

This is a native Germanic suffix with the sense of “belonging to”. Since English has been much influenced by French and Latin, the suffix is not as productive as it used to be. However, in other Germanic languages, such as German, its usage is far more common. Nationalities which use -ish in German (-isch) but not in English include Italienisch (Italian), Chinesisch (Chinese), Isländisch (Icelandic) and Irakisch (Iraqi). Its Germanic origin explains why nationalities that use -ish are all in Europe, and belong to Germanic nations around Germany and Scandinavia. This is even clearer if you consider two more facts:

The word German does not end in -ish, because the united nation of Germany did not exist until relatively recently. The word German comes from a Latin word referring to the people in that region.

Both French (from Frencisc) and Dutch (from Diutisc) in fact contain the suffix -ish, although in both cases, the suffix has been fused with the base to form a new, irregular adjective.

-i

The suffix -i, with the meaning of “belonging to”, comes from Arabic. This explains why almost all countries that use -i are Islamic and/or use Arabic as one of the major languages. Geographically, the center of this group of nations is in the Middle East, and extends to Central Asia to the north, and to East Africa to the south. A notable exception in this area is Iran, which had a long history of contact with the West before they gradually converted to Islam.

Summary

After seeing the distribution of the suffixes of nationality on a world map, and studying the origins of these suffixes, I think we should be reasonably convinced that the choice of suffix is not entirely a matter of chance or taste. Instead, there are historical and linguistic factors which determine why one suffix is used for a certain nationality but another suffix for a second one.
English is a Germanic language, its native suffix for nationality is -ish, which accounts for the names of nearby nationalities. But before English had gone global and applied its suffix to other nationalities, it was influenced by Latin and French. The default suffix of nationality used in the language was replaced by the Latinate -ian/-ean/-an, so more recently coined nationalities made use of them instead. Later, the contact between Italy and the Far East, together with the European colonization of Africa and South America, brought in some nationalities ending in -ese. Then, Islamic countries near the Middle East retained their Arabic -i when their names entered English. Lastly, a few places that end in -land or Island make use of the suffixes -er/-ic.
On second thought, the whole picture is just that simple.
 

-ese

-ian

-ean

-an

-ish

-i

-ic

-er

others

-ese