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The Rich Vote Republican in The US.: Needy, The Divorced, The Illiterate, Etc
The Rich Vote Republican in The US.: Needy, The Divorced, The Illiterate, Etc
We can use the + adjective (without noun) when we a referring to certain groups of people in
general. For example, when we want to talk about people who are deaf, we can say the deaf,
as an alternative to deaf people. You can see some examples below.
The government is going to provide more help for the mentally ill.
This tradition has existed for centuries to keep the memory of the dead.
Other common adjectives used in this way are the deaf, the young, the disabled, the old, the
needy, the divorced, the illiterate, etc.
Note that in English we don’t use the article the when we are referring to things or people in
general. We say I love flowers (NOT the flowers) when we talk about flowers in general. For
this reason, when we use adjectives without nouns, as described above, we can always use
two different structures:
the + adjective (without noun): the rich, the blind, the young, etc.
adjective + people (without the): rich people, blind people, young people, etc.
Nationalities
The Chinese are unhappy about the new system. (=Chinese people)
Most other nationality words are nouns. The plural form is the same as the adjective + -s. With
these nouns, we can use the + plural noun to refer to all the people of that nationality.
When we want to refer to one person from a specific country, if the nationality adjective ends
in –ch, -sh, -ese, -ss, we must add -man or -woman after it. We say an Englishman or an
Englishwoman (NOT an English), a Frenchman or a Frenchwoman (NOT a French), an Irishman
or an Irishwoman (NOT an Irish), etc.
There are several nationality adjectives ending in -ch, -sh, -ese, -ss that have special nouns to
refer to a person from the country. We say a Spaniard (NOT a Spanishman), a Dane (NOT a
Danishwoman), a Finn, a Scot, a Pole, a Swede, a Turk, etc.
When a special word exists, there are two possible ways of referring to all people of a
nationality:
For other nationalities, the singular noun is normally the same as the adjective: Belgian → a
Belgian, Moroccan → a Moroccan, etc.