Can adjectives alone be nouns? Is 'Like other French who lived through the war ...' acceptable?

The Pope then asked: 'Are there any English here?'

Like other French who lived through the war, he’s trying to pass on to younger generations the gratitude he feels.

These are taken respectively from a book titled "A Traveller in Rome" (by H. V. Morton) and a news article titled "Normandy tries to keep alive ‘infinite gratitude’ for D-Day" (published by MilitaryTime.com https://www.militarytimes.com/military-honor/salute-veterans/2019/05/29/normandy-tries-to-keep-alive-infinite-gratitude-for-d-day/)

The word "English" is an adjective and that's why you call someone from England an Englishman or Englishwoman, not an English. The same goes for French and you call someone from France a Frenchman or Frenchwoman, not a French.

Why is it "Are there any English here?", not "Are there any English people here? Also, why is it "Like other French who lived through the war", not "Like other French people who lived through the war"?

Solution 1:

There are many nationalities for which the adjective and noun are the same: Indian, German, Russian, Mexican, Yemeni.

For France and England, the standard nouns are Frenchmen and Englishmen. These really are not consistent with gender-neutral language; I suspect the author replaced them with French and English in the interest of gender neutrality.

Is this a good idea? It's probably better than Engliards, Engles and Englanders (modeled after Spanish/Spaniard, Swedish/Swede, and Iceland/Icelander). And if people keep on doing this, it will stop sounding funny.

Solution 2:

Yes, adjectives can substitute for nouns in the plural, as both your examples are. We traditionally speak of the wounded, the poor etc. However, it's nowadays considered less impersonal to say, for example disabled people rather than the disabled.