"She’s Mexican. But she’s married to an American." (Pimsleur English course)
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1Possible duplicate of Michael is a New Zealander or Michael is New Zealander? Article before nationalities?– user3395Commented Jul 13, 2017 at 14:14
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1Correspondingly, He’s American. But he’s married to a Mexican. But you could have said She's a Mexican or He’s an American.– FumbleFingersCommented Jul 13, 2017 at 14:17
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Related: english.stackexchange.com/q/194684/64632– ChenmunkaCommented Jul 13, 2017 at 14:48
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1 Answer
"Mexican" is an adjective here, "American" is a noun. Both the words, "Mexican" and "American" can be either adjective or a noun. So all of the following are valid:
- "She is Mexican."
- "She is a Mexican."
- "She is American."
- "She is an American."
Not all nationalities are like this though. (Usually the ones ending in -an work as above.) For example, "English" and "French" are only adjectives. The noun form would be "a Frenchman" or "an Englishman", but these words are not used much. It's more common to say "a French guy" or an "an English woman" or something along those lines.
Side note: In the US, in certain contexts it can be considered rude to refer to someone as "a X" e.g. "a Mexican". Saying "a Mexican man" would be more polite.