“A dual nationality” vs. “dual nationalities”

Question

Which one is correct?

He has a dual nationality.

He has dual nationality.

He has dual nationalities.

I used have dual citizenship. Extrapolate as you feel fit. :-)
The vast majority of Americans (for instance) have dual nationality. Unless you are referring to ethnicity, dual citizenship is probably more appropriate, and less ambiguous.
@horatio: How is nationality different from citizenship? Is the first one just not official or not recognized by a government?
Note that I said "nationality" is often ambiguous, but not wrong. It is common at some point for someone to enquire as to one's nationality. For example, by parents are by turns Irish, English, and German. I have friends who claim to be of 5 or six different nationalities. So in my personal experience, nationality does not always mean citizenship.

krubo · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-14 03:40:00Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

My vote is for "He has dual nationality." This construction treats "dual nationality" as a legal status unto itself, not as countable item(s).

The Google test agrees with this, returning 9,000, 68,000, and 3,000 results for your three respective options.

answered Jun 14 '11 at 3:40

krubo
99638

Did you google the sentence using "He has"? – Louis Rhys Jun 14 '11 at 5:04

Thursagen · Answer 2 · 2011-06-14 06:00:42Z

up vote 1 down vote

I would say it was "dual nationality", cause although he has two types of nationality, he has one actual nationality, that is a mix of the two.

This can also be seen in things like "the dual number.", which is a number composed of two other numbers.

answered Jun 14 '11 at 6:00

Thursagen
1

I think you will find dual number more commonly refer to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29, than to mathworld.wolfram.com/DualNumber.html, thought I agree - plural would refer to multiple things that can be called dual. – Unreason Jun 14 '11 at 7:56

2 Answers