Countries and nationalities in Japanese

learn the words of countries and nationalities in Japanese!

Talking about countries and nationalities in Japanese seems to be easier than I thought.

Countries and nationalities in Japanese

The biggest difficulty with this subject is simply having to phonetically transcribe country names into Japanese, which usually occurs from English into Japanese.

The same thing happens with nationality names, only at this stage, we derive nationality from the country names in Japanese.

the names of countries in Japanese

How about starting this article by listing country names in Japanese? Look at the table below:

See too:
Numbers in Japanese with Kanji
5 sites to learn Japanese

Building nationality words

To form words indicating nationality, we will need the kanji 人, which means person. when we add 人 at the end of a country's name, the meaning of the word changes. Instead of the name of a country, we will have a nationality. Check it out:

Realize that, in addition to coming after the name of a country, the kanji 人 change your pronunciation to jin. In a more literal translation 人 indicates that the word refers to a person from that country. In case of ブラジル人, the literal translation would be person from brazil or brazilian person. So far there is nothing complicated. Right?

Building words indicating spoken language

To indicate the language spoken in a country, we will need kanji 語, which means language or language. The same way that 人, you'll just need to add 語 at the end of each country name to indicate the language spoken in that region. Let's go to the examples?

One important thing that we must realize right away is that the names of countries do not always match the names of the language spoken in the country. The language spoken in Brazil, for example, is Portuguese. if i use ブラジル語, it will be strange, since there is no language brazilian. In some cases, it is common to find the word ブラジルのポルトガル語, to make a distinction between the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and the one spoken in Portugal.

Because of this problem is that ブラジル, アメリカ and other countries in the same situation, use the name of another country and the kanji 語 to indicate the spoken language. In the case of Brazil, we use Portugal and 語; in the case of the United States, we use England and 語. What language is spoken in Argentina? Spanish. So in Japanese, the language spoken in Argentina is スペイン語 (Spain + 語).

How to speak your nationality in Japanese

To close this article about countries and nationalities in Japanese, I decided to write a little about how to ask people's nationalities. This topic will be very simple, but it can be useful in common situations.

Asking about nationality

We can ask someone's nationality in two different ways: asking what country of origin, or what nationality. Let's go to the examples:

お国はどこですか。

何人ですか。

お国はどこですか is a question related to the country or place where we live. The answer to this question is always the name of a country or city. On the other hand, 何人ですか is a question related to nationality. Therefore, the answer is always related to the country where we were born.

お国はどこですか。
ブラジルです。

何人ですか。
ブラジル人です。

Asking about the language

One topic related to the subject that I couldn't fail to mention is how to ask what language someone else speaks. This part is very basic and most Japanese Language readers should already know it.

日本語を話せますか。

はい、話せます。

いいえ、話せません。

Kanji calligraphy exercise

Below are the Japanese ideographic symbols used in this article. Selecting the desired kanji, copy and paste them into Worksheet for Kana and Kanji Practice , a new window will open where you can view the printable file and practice Japanese calligraphy by covering the gray symbols and then trying to write yourself. Just print and practice.