Spanish vs Spaniards

[nq:1]Hi, Spanish is my native languague and I'm learning english. I'd like to ask what's the difference in saying: Spanish people, or the Spanish, and saying Spaniards.[/nq]
My impression is that "Spaniard", though still in dictionaries, has become rather quaint these days - rather like Chinaman or Frenchman. I believe I now usually only hear it on football commentaries. We tend to just use t

[nq:1]My impression is that "Spaniard", though still in dictionaries, has become rather quaint these days - rather like Chinaman or Frenchman.[/nq]
I don't see anything quaint about "Frenchman". Surely it's still the normal way to refer to a male person from that country?
[nq:1]I believe I now usually only hear it on football commentaries. We tend to just use the adjective "Spanish" for pr

To my ear, the quaintness comes when such terms seem to concentrate on the adult male. Although my dictionaries don't restrict the term to adult males, I wouldn't expect to hear a Spanish woman or child described as a Spaniard. The female equivalents of Englishman, Chinaman etc etc either sound clumsy or don't exist. And there simply isn't an equivalent for children - the age when most of us encou

[nq:2]i would say "a Spaniard" in preference to "a man ... to me, even though "a Chinese" is probably now acceptable.[/nq]
[nq:1]To my ear, the quaintness comes when such terms seem to concentrate on the adult male. Although my dictionaries don't restrict the term to adult males, I wouldn't expect to hear a Spanish woman or child described as a Spaniard.[/nq]
That's interesting, as it hadn

[nq:1]To my ear, the quaintness comes when such terms seem to concentrate on the adult male. Although my dictionaries don't ... or child described as a Spaniard. The female equivalents of Englishman, Chinaman etc etc either sound clumsy or don't exist.[/nq]
I've been hearing words like Englishwoman, Irishwoman, Scotswoman, Frenchwoman all my life and they don't sound clumsy or quaint to me. On

[nq:1][/nq]
[nq:2]To my ear, the quaintness comes when such terms seem ... Englishman, Chinaman etc etc either sound clumsy or don't exist.[/nq]
[nq:1]I've been hearing words like Englishwoman, Irishwoman, Scotswoman, Frenchwoman all my life and they don't sound clumsy or quaint to me. On the other hand I would find Chinaman very old-fashioned with slightly sinister (and racist) overtones

Thank you all for your excelent comments!

chabral

[nq:2] I've been hearing words like Englishwoman, Irishwoman, Scotswoman, Frenchwoman ... sinister (and racist) overtones reminiscent of old Fu manchu films.[/nq]
[nq:1]It's interesting, though (FWIW) that "Englishwoman" gets only a tenth as many Google hits as "Englishman" - and "Irishwoman" a ... a mighty 0.23% of "Scotsman". Even allowing the obvious caveats on such comparisons, they don't

At 11:55:06 on Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Phil C. (Email Removed) wrote in (Email Removed):
[nq:1]It's interesting, though (FWIW) that "Englishwoman" gets only a tenth as many Google hits as "Englishman" - and "Irishwoman" a ... a mighty 0.23% of "Scotsman". Even allowing the obvious caveats on such comparisons, they don't seem to be popular terms.[/nq]
Don't forget that a huge number of those hits

[nq:2]It's interesting, though (FWIW) that "Englishwoman" gets only a tenth ... on such comparisons, they don't seem to be popular terms.[/nq]
[nq:1]Don't forget that a huge number of those hits for "Scotsman" will have been referring to the daily newspaper. Besides, the three aren't true parallels; you can refer to a Scot, which you can't do with the English and the Irish.[/nq]
True.