Actually
If you're from Pakistan you're a Pak.
If you're from Tajikistan - Tajik
Balochistan - Baloch (my favourite)
And so on.
Stan, with the -i- used to stick it on the end, is like 'ia' in Europe.
Romania
Russia
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland...ia - okay, we stuck 'land' on the end of that one instead.
For some reason we put 'n' on the end of their names, except not for, say, Croats and Czechs (Czechia is a recognised name for the Czech Republic).
Pakistani means 'of Pakistan'; if you want to refer to the people that Pakistan itself is the land of then there's no reason why you can't say "Pak" except for being pounced on by a million different tabloids.
Iraqi is Arabic, Israeli is Hebrew, the 'i' ending is a semitic thing, the 'Israelite' seen in the bible, when referring to a man, is actually "Yisra'eli". For this reason I'm not so sure if Paki would be grammatically correct, although in semitic languages (which Iranian, Urdu and Pashto are not) it would be.
The real reason, however, is that it carries with it a whole load of racism due to "Paki" being a word used mainly by, well, racist people; as it is a diminuitive of Pakistan[i] and isn't really intended to be a politically correct term in the first place.
(, Sun 11 Jan 2009, 12:28, Reply)
erm... no.
Paki, Tajiki, Khazakhi etc are all linguistically acceptable.
Paki used to be in common use in the UK but it fell out of favour when it became overused as a derogatory term. See also "nigger" & "spastic".
(
admiral crunch holds the newsreader's nose squarely, Sun 11 Jan 2009, 13:06,
Reply)
well the chap in question did look like a paki
whats all the fuss about?
(, Sun 11 Jan 2009, 13:26, Reply)
I said I wasn't sure if it was acceptable
but turns out it is, so thank you.
But the point remains that the word Paki now carries with it a weight of racist sentiment.
(, Sun 11 Jan 2009, 13:52, Reply)