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I came across the following in a newspaper article:

> 藤沢健太教授（宇宙物理学）らの研究グループ

The first part (藤沢健太教授) is the name of a professor (Professor Kenta Fujisawa).
The parentheses say "Astrophysics", and the last part (の研究グループ) indicates his
research group. It's the `～ら` that confuses me.

I had only ever heard `～ら` after `かれ` or `お前`, so I did some searching, and I
found these sites.

  * [This source](http://japanese.about.com/od/Grammar/a/Personal-Pronouns.htm) says it is used for `かれ`, but doesn't elaborate.
  * [This source](http://thejapanesepage.com/w/index.php?title=Plurals) says that it is an informal version of `～たち`, which doesn't seem to fit in the context of a newspaper (unless I'm wrong about that), or the very technical topic. 
  * And [this source](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Grammar/Nouns) simply says that it's another version of `～たち`.

I'm still unclear as to when one should use ら if it's informal, yet also in
the paper. Does anyone know the nuance of it?
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2011-12-10T17:28:05.877
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2011-12-10T20:31:27.060
2011-12-10T19:48:00.990
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question
nuances suffixes plurals
What are the rules for the plural suffix ～ら
It is rather the other way around of what the second link says, and the reason
for that description is that it is probably confusing politeness and
formality.

  * ら: non-polite, formal
  * たち: slightly polite, informal
  * がた: polite

As for 俺ら, 俺 is highly informal, and the whole combination is informal because
of that even if ら is formal.

And besides that, some personal pronouns only go with either of them as noted
in the first link.
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2011-12-10T20:23:30.507
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2011-12-10T20:31:27.060
2011-12-10T20:31:27.060
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answer