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LEGO vs legos
I don't know why, for some reason I can't help to see 'Legos' as incorrect when referring to the plural of Lego. In fact, when I talk/write about Lego, a single piece to me is a *piece* of Lego (or a Lego brick), the plural of which is pieces of Lego. The collective noun (?) to me is *Lego*, as in a box of Lego, as opposed to a box of Legos.
I'm not having a go at anyone,of course, I just find it interesting that many people use *Legos*, while others use *Lego*. Is there an official way to say it? Lego style guide or something?
BTW, I'm no expert when it comes to spelling, grammar, or language (although I'll fight for the serial/Oxford comma till the death ;)
I'm not having a go at anyone,of course, I just find it interesting that many people use *Legos*, while others use *Lego*. Is there an official way to say it? Lego style guide or something?
BTW, I'm no expert when it comes to spelling, grammar, or language (although I'll fight for the serial/Oxford comma till the death ;)
Comments
Worth a read if you've never read it before.
@bkpr - I think the answer to your original question is under "Proper Use of the LEGO Trademark on a Web Site "
So, as you talk about LEGO bricks, be sure to capitalize the word LEGO as you speak it. :)
• The LEGO® brand name should always be written in capital letters
• LEGO must never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
• When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials, LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
• The first time the LEGO brand name appears it must be accompanied by the registered symbol ®
:)
• The LEGO® brand name should always be written in capital letters
• LEGO must never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
but rarely follow the last two:
• When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials, LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
• The first time the LEGO brand name appears it must be accompanied by the registered symbol ®
Whereas in the US, you grew up with sticking an 's' on the end and it's generally much more accepted.
I guess here in the forum we just need to live and let live (and grind our teeth silently when someone spells it the 'wrong' way ;o)
"I'm going to drink two cans of Cokes."
or
"I'm going to drink two cans of Coke."
My linguistic skills are not great, I admit, but my skill for researching these rules is even worse. What rule, exactly, am I breaking when I say "Cokes" in my above sentence?
Basically, the thing is your hand is a brick made by the LEGO company - ie a LEGO brick(element/piece/thing). It was never 'a lego' so in plural would never be 'legos'. Similarly with a LEGO set, LEGO storage unit, LEGO business card etc etc
I've got lots of (non-AFOL) US friends who I must have brow beaten so much with this that they're now proudly telling all their kids how to say it correctly :-D And they are now telling their friends too! It does seem though that it's only the US that use the word 'legos'. Everyone I know from any other country has always said it 'correctly'.
Does it really matter that much? I guess not. Though if you pronounced my companies' name wrong I guess I'd be a little upset too....
• When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials, LEGO bricks, LEGO universe etc
Then the noun can be a plural but LEGO can't, but I guess because people rarely follow the rule above, it causes an issue.
But I was always told capitals were for acronyms only, ie. where each letter stands for a word (like IKEA stands for 'Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnary'). But, as we know, each letter in LEGO doesn't stand for an individual word, so why the capitals? Is it just a stylistic convention like iPhone and eBay, or something more?
It's like iPod.
For many years, you saw the media write I-pod, Ipod, ipod, etc. Phonetically, they're all correct, but simply not as it should be written. When you do see it written like that, the reader assumes ignorance.
As to the plural form, you don't say "sheeps" so you shouldn't say "legos" unless you are a sheep!
As the originator of this discussion, I'd like to say that while 'Legos' irks me a little, I'm not yelling at anyone to say it correctly. My new years' resolution for 2011 was to stop brabbling. As long as we understand each other it all works out.
Fun discussion though.
As Warren stated, the brick you hold is exactly that, a product manufactured by LEGO. It's a LEGO brick. Not a LEGO.
I consider it a non-countable noun, although I appreciate that's at odds with LEGO's third guideline. So I will say "I'm going to play with LEGO" but never "I'm going to play with LEGOs" or "I'm going to play with LEGO bricks"
I know it's an often criticized source, but the Wikipedia article for "proper nouns" has a section for pluralizing them. It uses Toyota as an example (Toyota builds Toyotas). It says (without source), "Such usage is often prescriptively limited to colloquial or informal-writing registers, although linguistically it is just as "correct" as any formal-register usage." As far as whether the thing in your hand is a LEGO, I can think of a many products that are referred to this way. My computer is made by Dell. It is not a Dell, it is a computer. Yet, it is often referred to as "a Dell." My car, incidentally, is "a Toyota." You never use this manner when speaking?
Is this never done outside of America?
And as far as confusion goes, the only part that confuses me is what linguistic rule is being broken. According to Warren, there is no such rule. If that is the case, why would a person's language skills be considered "subpar" if they referred to LEGO toys as Legos? Not in step with The LEGO Group thought police*, that I can see. But subpar language skills?
*meant only as a joke -- If I were running a website dedicated to LEGO, I would be happy to comply with any formatting requests from Billund (especially in exchange for their generously allowing use of their images etc.)
>>Is this never done outside of America?
I think it varies hugely. I drive a Volkswagen Polo. But I look for the 'keys to my car', not the 'keys to my polo'. But I did look for 'the keys to my TT' when I had an Audi TT!!
I think it also depends on what you call is a 'rule'. Is it US English grammar, UK English grammer, Danish grammer (which is a whole different kettle of fish) etc etc? There's certainly no statue of law anywhere that would tell you to say either thing, so I wouldn't consider it 'subpar'
As far as I'm concerned, the LEGO company would like me to call them LEGO bricks, so I do. No other reason!
I have to say I don't really care too much whether it is Lego or LEGO or how many sheep drink coke whilst driving their VW Polo and if so whether they should be considered sheeps drinking cokes in the Polos.
As @flump6523 says, I just plan on building my LEGO sets with my LEGO bricks :)
That said, Americans' language skills are horrible regardless of the level of education that some of them receive. I recall an incident my senior year when I found a paper written by a girl I knew, a senior elementary education major. She'd accidently left it in the library and since I lived in the same building I figured I'd drop it off in her mailbox on my way back home. I don't recall what distracted me but I forgot and about a week later I ran across the paper still in the folder I'd placed it in after finding it. Figuring that by now she'd either have printed another copy or rewritten it (it was only two pages long), I decided to toss it. However, I was bored so I pulled out my red pen and sat down to critique it. Egad, I have never seen writing such as what was on those two pages. Almost three dozen errors on the first page alone ranging from spelling to grammar and such illogical arguments that I was prompted to make a comment to a friend later that "I hope she ends up teaching the second grade because she has a third grade education." It was beyond horrible. As my English 102 professor once wrote in the margin of a student's paper, "How the hell did you get out of the third grade?"
Of course, American illiteracy doesn't merely pertain to writing. Back in late 2002 or early 2003 a study was released which indicated that as many as 25% of Americans were incapable of reading a product label much less a newspaper and that another 25% would have trouble filling out a long form or application.
Early last year a report from an international education NGO ranked nations' education levels based on a combination of factors such as literacy as well as economic potential. The United States, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the history of the world with a plethora of resources at our citizens' disposal, ranked near the absolute bottom of the list. Third World nations where many of their people don't even have schools ranked higher than the United States. When you look at people like Sarah ("refudiate") Palin it's not hard to see that studies like this are accurate. We're a nation with unparalleled opportunity to advance the education of our people and yet we have a significant portion of our population which is ignorant beyond belief. However, they're not just content to remain ignorant. They're actually proud of it. It's shameful and embarassing.
Back on topic, LEGO created their name and would be the ultimate authority on its usage. If they say "Legos" is incorrect then so it is. It's not necessarily something that you have to jump on and correct when you hear others say it but you can at least mind yourself.
I wonder, what does "Legos" sound like outside of America (or to people in America who think "Legos" sounds funny)? Is it initially taken as "LEGO's" as if the speaker was in the middle of saying "I will go home and play with LEGO's new online viseo game," but the one saying it stopped short? Do you find yourselves thinking, "LEGO's what? Their toys? Their video game?"
prof1515: Lego, Lego bricks, Lego blocks or Lego toys are all correct; Legos is not.
oldtodd33: Unless you live in the U.S as I do.
prof1515: Pardon? Not all Americans have subpar language skills.
...which to me would be you saying that saying "Legos" equates to having subpar language skills. Your comment was made before he clarified that he was commenting on another thread.
I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I'm still not understanding the "subpar language skills" comment.
If you don't care enough to read it (and I don't blame you), the AFFOL discussion devolves into a discussion about LEGO vs LEGOs.
The pertinent part is that the plural form of LEGOs is largely a US phenomenon and not present elsewhere. While there could be many reasons why this is the case, I think the most likely reason is colloquialism -- people of a locale hear it being called LEGOs and without otherwise knowing better or just as a matter of common familiarity perpetuate this usage.
Also pointed out in that discussion is that LEGO is a neologism, made up by TLG, so they would seemingly have the authority to dictate that the term should only be used as an adjective and not a noun, and thus should render the discussion of whether its a countable noun moot.
With that said, language evolves through usage and so, as the LEGO trademark risks genericization so too does it risk becoming a noun and then subject to grammar rules of pluralization. What we have is a cross-section of people that 1) honor the adjective only origin, 2) have genericized the trademark yet don't pluralize and 3) have genericized the trademark and pluralize.
Anyway, I'm gonna go LEGO some buildings for my town layout.
As for my use I normally won't use legos in a any type of fan site, but around friends and family I use it a lot. And as for the all caps in the name, I won't do it. TLG is one the thing. The word lego is other. And I don't care if the TLG doesn't like it.
Peter, of course, is horrified!
I always wondered why they gave those lines to the respective characters, as Peter is meant to be the ignoramus and Lois the more knowledgeable. Perhaps the writer, Seth MacFarlane (or should we write that "Macfarlane"), actually believes that?