Introduction
This
post is about exchanging personal details in general, and more
specifically about details
of nationality.
SCENARIO
Imagine you are
exchanging personal details. You come to the point of dealing with
nationalities. The other person decides to ask what nationality you
are and says: what is your nationality?
¿De
qué nacionalidad eres?
On the
other hand, he/ she could choose to be more formal and say to you:
¿De
qué nacionalidad es usted?
OUR
TIP
You
are being asked to give your nationality. When giving your
nationality, you DO NOT need be concerned about the degree of
formality in the other person's question. Whether the other person
uses the more/ less formal question is irrelevant to your choice of
answer.
Here
are a few sample answers*:
- Soy inglés (I am English – male);
- Soy inglesa (I am English – female);
- Soy escocés (I am Scottish – male);
- Soy escocesa (I am Scottish – female);
- Soy galés (I am Welsh – male);
- Soy galesa (I am Welsh – female);
- Soy irlandés (I am Irish – male);
- Soy irlandesa (I am Irish – female);
- Soy italiano (I am Italian – male);
- Soy italiana (I am Italian – female);
- Soy americano (I am American – male);
- Soy americana (I am American – female);
- Soy español (I am Spanish – male);
- Soy española (I am Spanish – female);
- Soy estadounidense (I am from the USA -male or female);
- Soy canadiense (I am Canadian -male or female);
- Soy vietnamita (I am Vietnamese -male or female)
Now
you should practise answering the question:
¿De
qué nacionalidad eres?
*NB
See Grammar below
*Grammar-Adjectives
- GenderAdjectivemaleinglésfemaleinglesa
Noun-Adjective
Agreement
See
notes below on Noun-Adjective agreement
Noun-Adjective
Agreement
As
you can see above, in Spanish you can also use a describing word/
adjective to indicate where someone comes from. Below follow some
notes on how to choose the correct form of the adjective for a given
noun.
Adjectives
-Gender
When
you use Spanish describing words/ adjectives, you need to bear in
mind that for each describing word in English, there are often two
related but different describing words/ adjectives in Spanish. The
reason being that Spanish describing words/ adjectives have to
'agree' with the gender (masculine or feminine) of the noun they
describe. Most Spanish describing words have similar but separate
words for each of the two genders (for example, americano/
americana). A few,
however have one single form (for example, canadiense).
Thus
when you come to use a describing word to indicate where someone
comes from, you need to check whether the corresponding Spanish
describing word/ adjective has:
- One single form (for example , estadounidense).
- Two separate forms (for example, inglés/ inglesa).- If the describing word/ adjective has two separate forms, then you need to choose the form which matches the gender (masculine/ feminine) of the noun it describes.
*NB
View posts with details about the plural of Spanish words here.
Spelling
Please
note that in Spanish, the names of countries, towns, cities, etc.
(for example, “Inglaterra” or “Londres”) are
capitalised. However, the nationality describing words/ adjectives
(for example “italiana”) are not.
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