Describe a Language Without the Noun for "Language"

Question

In English it is rare to use the noun "language" when describing them. It is most common to name the language as such:

Is it acceptable/common/comfortable to name these without the trailing word "язык?" I.e. Английский without "язык"?

Sergey Slepov · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-18T11:45:10.330

16

Yes, it is quite common in conversational speech:

Note that language names or nationalities are not capitalised in Russian. Neither are months or days or the week.

edited Dec 18 '17 at 11:45

answered Dec 17 '17 at 16:47

Sergey Slepov

The capitalization is unexpected! That is a very useful tip to pass along. – TomSchober Dec 17 '17 at 16:50
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Another thing to notice is that at least for Russian the word the same as in English happens: русский is all: Russian the language, Russian the nationality (noun), Russian the belonging of a particular country adjective. – Oleg Lobachev Dec 17 '17 at 21:27
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@OlegLobachev, the country-related adjective would be российский: российский флаг, гимн, etc. Only a handful of "national" adjectives have this distinction: латышский/латвийский, казахский/казахстанский (and other countries ending in -стан) and to some extent немецкий/германский. Have a look at this program that generates adjectives from country names: http://morpher.ru/adjectivizer/ – Sergey Slepov Dec 18 '17 at 11:54

1 Answers1