In Italian, the equivalent of person is persona, whose plural is persone; there is also another word that could be used instead of persone (gente) but that is not the plural of persona. It cannot be used as simple replacement of persone, as I cannot say ho visto quattro gente for "I saw four people," but I must say ho visto quattro persone.
In my English classes, I was taught that people is the plural of person, and that is the word I should use.
Google Translate, when I ask the translation of persone, it translates it as people, but looking at the alternatives it has (by clicking on the translation), I see:
- Persons
- Person
- Individuals
I find strange it suggests person, but I take Google Translate suggests also the singular of the word for which the translation is asked.
Is persons ever used in normal conversations? Being Italian my first language, I would be use persons as plural of person, but that is not what I was taught.
Is there any case where individuals is preferable to people, or persons? Suppose I want to say "I saw four people"; could I say "I saw four individuals"? Does the last phrase have a particular meaning, for example "four suspects" or "four people that came from different places, and randomly joined"?
Answer
Persons is very rare in normal English speech. Mostly you only come across it in legal or other "official" contexts such as...
The defendant conspired with a person or persons unknown to blow up the House of Lords.
6 persons maximum/Licensed to carry 4 persons (notices on lifts/taxis).
In most normal contexts the plural of person is people. When making a restaurant booking, for example, you'd normally ask for a table for six people - if you said six persons that would suggest you're nervous, unfamiliar with such situations, and foolishly trying to sound "correct" in an inappropriate context. If it was a swanky restaurant they might just say they're fully booked because you sounded gauche.
Individuals is also relatively uncommon in speech, tending again to be restricted to official (particularly, written) contexts. Probably because of this, if you said you saw four individuals somewhere, it might well imply four suspicious-looking characters, since the phrasing is typical of witnesses giving evidence in court, rather than everyday conversation.
Note that individuals carries no connotations of each individual being significantly different to every other. Identical twins wearing similar clothes are still two individuals, if the context permits using the term at all.
There's more on this subject in Person, Persons, People, Peoples, which was asked previously on ELU, but for most purposes I suggest it's enough to note that the standard forms are person/people.
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