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Hi, I'm Dan from BBC Learning English and today I'm going to talk to you about person and persons, people and peoples.
A person is a human man, woman, or child.
It is a singular countable noun.
There was one person at the door.
The plural of person is people.
It refers to a group or a number of human beings.
It is a plural countable noun.
There were three people at the door.
So how about persons?
Persons is a plural countable noun.
It's similar to people, but it's considered more polite and more formal.
It's most often seen written down.
This lift can hold a maximum of 15 persons.
And peoples?
Peoples is the countable plural form of people and comes from the other meaning of people.
People can mean nation.
The Aztecs were a people that lived in the Americas.
Or, there are many peoples living on the Earth.
They are all human - so far.