Question

Give the plural possessive form of the word: People

Answer 1

Hint: They have mentioned in the question that they require the plural possessive form. Remember that sometimes the word ‘people’ can be considered in its singular form or plural form. So sometimes we can retain ‘people’ as it is or change ‘people’ to its plural form, then we can make it possessive. Now we must understand that if we take a singular noun then for possessive we can add an apostrophe + s, but when we need to find a plural noun’s possessive form, there is a commonly accepted format, that is; we just need to add an apostrophe.

Complete answer:
Now what we should be clear about is that there are two ways of considering plural forms of ‘people’. The first way is the usual way where we add an ‘s’ to ‘people’ to make it plural, another way is treating the word ‘people’ as the plural of ‘person’ so we can retain ‘people’ in its plural form also.

The plural of the word person is indicated by the word people, that plural will be an irregular plural. We will talk only of a single 'person', but at the same time there will be multiple 'people'.
Example can be:
- The person who serves others on his own will is a volunteer. [Here volunteer is singular]
- The people who serve others on their own will are volunteers. [And here volunteers is plural]

The term peoples is an even more bizarre English linguistic exception. It is used to refer to native or pre-colonial people who are characterized by their race, culture, or even language.
Example; Native peoples have strong links to their ancestors' traditional homes and beliefs.

The word peoples works as a plural within that statement, as shown by the verb 'have'. Peoples seems to be the plural term people, so it's a kind of plural over a plural.
Keep in mind that people is just the plural term person. In the possessive pronoun of the term person, we append an apostrophe "s" ('s) to just the end of that word like this;
The key belongs to this person. It can be written as “This person’s key”.

The plural term people is extra-irregular, meaning it is not the same as the singular form. This means it receives the same regard as its singular form if it becomes possessive. Consider the following scenario:
The dogs belong to those people. Then the possessive way will be: “Those people’s dogs”.

Since the term peoples would be a plural with an “s” ending, it receives the same consideration as standard plurals in its possessive form:
The lands belong to the native peoples. In possessive: “The native peoples' lands.”

So take care that when you consider ‘people’ to be plural, the possessive would just become ‘people’s’, but at the same time if you consider ‘peoples’ as the plural (like while referring to a particular audience) then the possessive of that is peoples’.


Note: We know that possessive pronouns as its name suggests, is used to indicate what a person possesses or has. Let us understand exactly what different types of possessive pronouns are;
We have different pronouns for every stage of persons, and there are multiple pronouns for the first and third person. For the first person we have ‘mine’ and ‘ours’, for the second person we have ‘yours’ and third person will be ‘his’, ‘hers’, ‘its’ and ‘theirs’.

Let us try using the various possessive pronouns in different sentences:
This basketball is mine, but that football is his.
The jackets left on the court are theirs.