Post by s***@my-deja.comPost by ***@gmail.comI'm a Chinese.
I'm Chinese.
What's differences between them?
I am Chinese.
As others have posted, this is the better sentence
You do not use a measure word.
I am a Chinese.
This is old fashioned at best.
It was once a normal word, despite some flights of fancy in this thread.
As the Oxford English Dictionary says,
1. a. A native of China. [The plural /Chineses/ was in regular use during 17th cent.:
since it became obsolete /Chinese/ has been singular and plural; in modern times
a singular /Chinee/ has arisen in vulgar use in U.S. (So sailors say /Maltee,
Portuguee/.)]
1606 E. Scott (title) An Exact Discourse of the..East Indians, as well Chyneses as
Iauans.
1667 J. Milton Paradise Lost iii. 438 Sericana, where Chineses drive With Sails and
Wind thir canie Waggons light.
1697 W. Dampier New Voy. around World xv. 406 The Chinese in general are tall.
1702 J. Cunningham in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 23 1206 Saying that the
Chineses are strangers to the art of grafting.
1842 J. C. Prichard Nat. Hist. Man 228 The Chinese have long been the most
numerous and powerful of these nations.
1848 S. W. Williams Middle Kingdom II. xiv. 52 If a Chinese feared or expected
something from a foreigner.
The OED seems to want to prove that "Chineses" existed. For an example of the
singular earlier than 1848,
"He [a freethinker] is sometimes seen in the guise of a Chinese, talking notably of
Confucius : Anon he is a Turk, lavishing praises on Mohammed..."
Ely Bates, /A Chinese Fragment: Containing an enquiry into the present state of
religion in England/ (1786)
https://books.google.com/books?id=g5hhAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA162
Post by s***@my-deja.comNative speakers would not use this structure.
...
Not any more.
--
Jerry Friedman