Even Greener Pastures

California, I'd like to thank you for the extensive analysis you provided last night. That's what I call a proper comment (never mind half of it was about German)

It's good to know that both a vegan/a vegetarian sound as natural to you as vegan/vegetarian. From what I've read, I think that the rule would be that unless you're a meatless dish, you're not vegetarian, you're a vegetarian (a person who doesn't eat meat) but the rule doesn't seem to matter, since people seem to really like using it as an adjective regardless.

What you're saying about gay vs a gay corresponds with what people say in the wordreference discussion we talked about earlier. I didn't know "a gay" was derogatory when I wrote my post. I thought it was just un-natural, maybe. When you say "a homosexual", it really stands out, though. It reminds me of Dr Larch from John Irving's The Cider House Rules. He's accused of being "a nonpracticing homosexual".

Oh, and this made me laugh:

In German I learned that when you were talking about, perhaps immutable characteristics or identities, professions, you left out the „a“, or the ein, the indefinite article. So „Er ist Berliner“ instead of like JFKs famously embarrassing „Ich bin ein Berliner“, (a Berliner is a jelly doughnut, which are my favorite actually- jelly filled with lots of sugar on top).