"You are my people."
Translation:Vous êtes mon peuple.
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En French "le peuple" translates "the people" (one group of individuals led by a king or other authority, specifically)
"les gens" translates "people" (a assembly, an indefinite number of individuals).
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people say that they are happy = les gens disent qu'ils sont heureux
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the people of France was united = le peuple de France était uni
Note: "vous êtes mes gens" could be used in the far past when a nobility referred to the group of his servants, farmers, etc.
Sitesurf, does your last paragraph mean I could not use the French phrase today to mean "we are birds of a feather" and convey that meaning? If I said the English sentence to my peers, after finding out we were in agreement on something, my meaning that "we are the alike, on the same team, united, etc" would not be lost on them. Not the same in French?
"Vous êtes mes gens" has never had that meaning, as far as I know.
The closest French idiom is "qui se ressemble s'assemble", or if 2 persons: "les deux font la paire".
For what it's worth, English has a similar, casual, phrase: "He is good people." It does not quite mean "a good person," which would be grammatically correct, but something closer to "I like him."
I use that myself but its popular for the same reason kids often over used ain't...because it was not right. I am sure that happens in french too.
Think of the Latin populus, which is the origin of French peuple. Populus is something that you would think of as a singular entity, similarly to the word union (e.g. "this union of workers has many members" vs. "these people are its members").
You can use it when talking to people with whom you share a common thing socially, culturally, etc; people you feel a kinship with.
In Grey's Anatomy (TV show), Christina Yang says to her friend Meredith Grey, "You are my person" meaning the one human she can count on for everything; the one person who truly understands her.
It is similar to saying, "we are one and the same".
