Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 August 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 17

Yankee go home? Or Yankees go home?

What is the correct grammatical form? Singular or plural?--Hofhof (talk) 13:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

We Britons would say "Yanks Go Home", examples of our indigenous calligraphy are here and here (see also Romani ite domum). Alansplodge (talk) 13:57, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I wonder whether 'yankee' is a collective noun. Or, since this is normally written by foreigners (maybe they use it in the Southern US too, but I have not seen it), whether this is a grammar mistake. --Hofhof (talk) 14:04, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Romani ite domum -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 14:09, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Grammatically, they are surely both correct. Yankee can hardly be a collective noun when there is a plural form Yankees (though as an adjective it could be either singular or plural - hence Yankee soldiers). Which to use depends on how many of them you want to get rid of, and whether you are trying to address them as a group, or target your comment at each of them individually. Wymspen (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Have you read our article on the subject? --Thomprod (talk) 15:58, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

There's not much there, in terms of sing./plural use. Notice that the question could well be "terrorist/s go home" or "Japanese/s go home." Hofhof (talk) 16:11, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Except Japanese is not a noun when describing a person. It's only an adjective in that sense. The noun form of Japanese only refers to the language. --Jayron32 16:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Although it used to be, I found this example from as recently as 1967: "According to tradition he was a Japanese who had understood and examined Buddhism better and more thoroughly than any one of his contemporaries". Encounter Or Syncretism: The Initial Growth of Japanese Buddhism by Jacques H. Kamstra. Alansplodge (talk) 16:50, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

That's an extremely common usage actually. Google Books coughs up these books from the 21st century on the first page: The Japanese in America, 2010; Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850, 2011; The Japanese in Latin America, 2004. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:08, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

"The Japanese" as a nationality maybe, but personally, I would find it slightly offensive (or perhaps archaic) to refer to an individual Japanese person as "a Japanese". However, you're right, another search finds more than one 21st century book which does just that, for example: "Theroux meets a Japanese who was walking down memory lane in Harbin where he had been a student in the 1930s..." [1] Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

As opposed to what? A "Jap"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:43, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

As opposed to "a Japanese person". Alansplodge (talk) 21:02, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

The "person" part is understood and is omitted. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:46, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

It's a bit like calling a black person "a black"; not going to go down too well where I live. Alansplodge (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

No, that would be like calling a Japanese a "yellow". You would say someone is an African-American, and then you'd be good. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Somewhat inappropriate outside the USA, which is where sentiments like "Yankee(s) go home", the OP's initial topic, would be likely expressed. Most black people I know (in the UK) are of either Afro-Caribbean or direct African origins, and would be highly insulted to be called "anything-American". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.90.255 (talk) 15:22, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Archaic and non-standard sure, but why would referring to a person as "a Japanese" be offensive, Alansplodge? Or "a Chinese", "a Maltese", "a Burmese", "a Taiwanese", "a Vietnamese", "a Sudanese", or "a Portuguese" for that matter? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:32, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for butting in to the conversation, but I would think all of those were potentially offensive in formal writing language, because they are non-standard. If the rest of your writing is formal and accurate except for this, then it stands out, and could be interpreted as saying that you do not think the person's nationality is worth of respect. I think in most cases people would default to the adjectival form (Aki is Japanese), though it would take a bit of time with a corpus to check. It may be helpful to consider other nominalized adjectives of identity: John is a gay or Jane is a black would generally be regarded as offensive, even though the plural forms would be more acceptable, especially in newspaperese (Polish gays demand judgement overturned; MLK lead blacks to freedom). The same principle applies to "a British", "a Welsh", and "a French", which are often nominalized by 'second language' speakers, even though that's currently incorrect in standard English. Matt's talk 23:37, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that phrase is a pejorative but my point was that even scholarly works like this 1943s Smithsonian report The Japanese use the longer version. Stating categorically that Japanese is only an adjective is false. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

The OED says Jayron32 is correct: "Formerly as true n. with pl. in -es; now only as adj. used absol. and unchanged for pl.: a Japanese, two Japanese, the Japanese." This entry is from the 1989 edition and the most recent quotation is from 1839. So it is a nominalized adjective (the examples at adnoun may be more helpful). In formal writing, I encourage students to consider writing "a Japanese person"/"∅ Japanese people" because the 'unfinished' adjective sounds unnatural (poor style) to me and to some examiners, although it's certainly a grammatical English usage. On the original question, the OED gives no sign of Yankee being used as a collective noun, so "Yankee go home" would only be correct for one person. TBH I think the more natural English style would be "Go home, Yankee", but the influence of the Yanks Go Home idiom might override that. Matt's talk 18:49, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

According to [2] Japanese is a noun too.Hofhof (talk) 20:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I found "Yankee Go Home" as a slogan used by French Communist dockers in a campaign against the establishment of NATO in 1949; see Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Ch. 3) by Richard F. Kuisel (1993, University of California Press). Is there an earlier use of the "Whoever Go Home" idiom out there? Alansplodge (talk) 19:13, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Another "Yankee Go Home" from a banner at a Communist youth rally in Berlin, 1950. I can't find anything earlier. Alansplodge (talk) 19:27, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Google Ngrams supports an origin in the late 1940s or early '50s, but surprisingly says that the more common form is the singular. Apparently someone wrote an article about the snowclone in the 60s, but it's not online. In addition, John Hasted wrote a song called Go Home Yankee. I found an article of unknown provenance claiming that this was written in 1951. Hasted apparently often adapted songs from the Eastern Bloc; lo and behold an anonymous collection of Soviet songs gives us an original in German with words by Ernst Busch, then a major pop star in Germany, based in East Berlin. The Berliner Zeitung confirms it was a popular song in '50s East Germany and German WP has an article. It was published in a German newspaper on 28 July 1950. But the German song has no Yankees: it's called "Go home, Ami!" Ami here is an unfriendly German word for Yankee, not the French for friend, and is used in the singular. WP-DE dates the phrase to 1950.

Looking for earlier sources, an oral memoir by Sir John Peck says Yankees (plural) was used in the Netherlands during the period 1947-50 and attributes its origin to pro-Soviet French intellectuals (see M.R.D. Foot Holland at War Against Hitler: Anglo-Dutch Relations 1940-1945 (Routledge, 2012)). However, I can imagine Peck (or his transcriber) correcting a perceived grammatical error five decades later, and it does not definitely push us back before 1950. In addition, if you look carefully at the French source helpfully cited earlier by Alansplodge, the claim it was used in 1949 is supported by a magazine cover from 1951, which just says "Go Home", which is exactly what you might do if you wanted to quote the German song in French. So this evidence seems to confirm the phrase was invented by a continental European (or Soviet) Communist propagandist in 1950, possibly 1949. It would be an interesting exercise for a Russian speaker to search for earlier uses of the equivalent phrase in that language. However, IMHO the balance of probabilities suggests that the English phrase has its origin in Ernst Busch's songwriting skills. But that's just WP:OR... Matt's talk 21:10, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

A Google Books search on "Янки, идите домой" turns up several documents. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:25, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Matt, I had imagined that it had its origins in wartime Britain, as the linked sitcom above suggests (‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here’) but apparently not. Alansplodge (talk) 21:29, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

See also wikt:Yankee go home and Commonscat:Category:Yankee-go-home. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 07:51, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

RT goes with yankee (track 7). Martinevans123 (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Just in case our American cousins are feeling victimised, I also found "Rosbeefs go home" on a Commonwealth War Grave in France [3] (apparently a protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq). As a footnote, the author has added "Mort aux Yankees" just to share the love. Alansplodge (talk) 12:15, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

And I see Dubya and Tony were due to appear at the TPI. I must have missed that. But great to see a backwards swastika for a change (?) Martinevans123 (talk) 16:52, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

There's a subtle difference in usage. "Yankees go home" would be a general slogan about Yanks. "Yankee go home" is more direct, aimed at the individual Yank. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:34, 18 August 2017 (UTC)