Lego or Legos?

[Brickington]

I call mine Betty.

• Planning to build? "Got a date with Betty."
  
• Going to buy some? "Going shopping for Betty."
  
• Think they're overpriced? "That Betty sure is getting expensive."
  
• A big fan? "I really love Betty."
  

Seems perfectly reasonable and it never requires choosing a plural or singular form, it's just Betty, and she's built like a stack of bricks.

LOL, but what if I already have lady? My girlfriend will think I'm cheating on her. But that is a good way to say LEGO (bricks).

[Vindicare]

I went and reread the thread this is merged with...and I kept thinking two things while reading, people saying "who cares, there's bigger things/problems in the world". True, there is, but this is a site for AFOLs. We talk about all things related to LEGO.

Second, and a biggie, is that it comes down to respect in my mind. TLG has asked(since the 80's it seems) that we, not only fans, but the general public who either looked at the catalogs or the website to call them/write them by a specific name. Why not oblige them? Do you not respect them enough to just disregard what they say?

Now, if you're new to the hobby I can understand you not knowing better. Once you see it corrected as LEGO, can you not have enough courtesy to not type it as Lego/lego/legos?

[Mister Phes]

I call mine Betty. [...] Seems perfectly reasonable and it never requires choosing a plural or singular form, it's just Betty, and she's built like a stack of bricks.

But seriously...

The Eurobricks Member Guidelines state:

English skills and Clarity: Try to be clear and precise when posting and use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

So why would we make an exception with the pluralisation of "LEGO"?

[Meatman]

Legos to me is a slang term for Lego Bricks. I once heard that if a Lego employee uses the term LEGOS that they can be fired over that. Is this true or just an Urban Legend?

[GregoryBrick]

That being said, from a purely grammatical standpoint, it's a perfectly valid argument that pluralizing a brand name is incorrect. Just because people are able to say things, and do say them, does not make it correct. If you really want to get technical, that's the way it is. It's precision of terminology.

If we want to know what the rules of a language are, we have to study the language as it is practiced and deduce its rules from observation. We describe the observed language accurately if our rules actually describe how people use their language. Most appeals to what people 'ought' to say are based on arbitrary rules they learned in grade school, not on the rules language actually follows. Following arbitrary rules presented as grammatical rules has nothing to do with 'precision' or 'technical' status.

Sorry, it technically is. A brand name is not the object it produces. That's a fact. Yes, colloquially, people pluralize brand names to refer to those objects all the time, but it is not technically correct.

How does one know if one is being simply 'correct' or if one is 'technically correct'? I am not asking this sarcastically; it seems to me to be a meaningless distinction. Either an utterance fits the rules of a language (which we have deduced through observation of language in practice, not by corporate decree) or it does not.

A lot of what happens in the common vernacular would make english professors tear their hair out in frustration. What you're saying is "messy" looks that way because it is incorrect. Your brain has been subtly trained to recognize that, whether you admit it or not.

I don't think you quite get the difference between literary and colloquial English. While you can say just about anything you want to in the vernacular, that doesn't mean it follows proper grammatical usage.

A few points:

1) English professors are not experts on grammar, linguists are.

2) The distinction between 'literary' and 'colloquial' English is not a distinction based on grammatical correctness, they are simply different registers.

3) Statements in any register either follow the rules of the language in which they are uttered or they do not - but the distinction between registers is again not based on how well they adhere to the language's grammatical rules. You can't say 'just about anything you want to in the vernacular' - if it's ungrammatical, it won't be language whatsoever.

The Eurobricks Member Guidelines state: [that we should use correct grammar]. So why would we make an exception with the pluralisation of "LEGO"?

Because the pluralisation of LEGO is not ungrammatical. The rules of grammar are not determined by TLG nor selective understandings of 'mass count nouns', or anything else brought up in this thread.

That said, it is a sign of respect to call people and entities what they wish to be called. Since this is a LEGO forum, it is considerate to use LEGO as TLG requests (and there may be other good reasons to do so), but it has nothing to do with grammar whatsoever.

I would recommend that people read the following http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/MLA2004.pdf. It is written by an accomplished linguist, is accessible, and addresses some of the confusion in this thread. I am not an expert on language; if there happens to be a practicing linguist in the audience that could be illuminating.

[daisy]

This actually does cause a bit of a conundrum for Americans when speaking in a personal context. If I were to say to friends "I was building with Lego bricks yesterday" they will think I was limiting myself to only rectangular parts. If I said "lego toys" people would wonder if there was some other type of non-construction item made by lego. If I just said "bricks" people think real construction materials. If I say plastic bricks people think I am being cryptic or silly, or it is just plain confusing. I can occasionally use "lego sets" but that implies I am building a specific set according to instructions, as opposed to making MOC. ( is it "a MOC"? That doesn't seem grammatically correct either "a my own creation")

I am making an effort to comply with TLG by using "Lego" in conversation. However I realize that still is not fully compliant wi their request, since I am using LEGO as a plural noun. Hmmm....

I guess it would have been helpful if TLG had come up with a separate name for their interlocking bricks, but I guess they didn't know it was an iconic toy. For example I call all the plastic dolls on my girls bedroom floor "Barbies" but never mattels, and never fashion dolls, even though there are some generic ones. Since there are 2 levels of trademark names it offered Mattel better legal protection, and makes it easier to discuss.

Legos still occasionally slips out, though I have pretty much converted to LEGO, and have attempted to educate others in a fun fact sort of way, not by correcting them directly so much.

Unfortunately TLG can't go back and make a separate non-combursome name for their plastic construction toy. Although if it is any reassurance to TLG I don't know of anyone who calls non LEGO plastic interlocking blocks Legos, unless it is in a mixed collection w/ LEGO bricks being the majority.

[CorneliusMurdock]

@GregoryBrick- I had started to write a detailed response to everything you've quoted of mine. And I'll admit to reading through the paper you linked to in order do so. Then I realized we were just looking at it from different perspectives.

The difference between English professors and linguists can be likened to the difference between engineers and theoretical physicists. Professors are tasked with teaching young minds to construct their words in a way that others will find easy to understand. And there are rules to it, whether they are often followed or not. Linguists have the task of defining what the language is and what it is changing to become and thus their concepts of these rules are necessarily more fluid.

So I'm going to agree to disagree with you on the matter of correctness and be done with it.

[ShaydDeGrai]

Well now that this particular beaten dead horse has been resurrected, died again and continued to the beaten. I figured I'd re-read the past few pages and add a few lashes of my own to the carcass. It seems that there are three basic camps driving arguments for and against: Legal; Civil; and, Grammatical.

The Legal argument is simple. TLG has a trademark for the use of a hieroglyph that resembles the word LEGO (written in all caps) that may be used (atomically) in place of an adjective to describe their products. IP law on trademarks refer to icons, logos and symbols used in place of words, that is to say rules of grammar do not apply with respect to the actual trademarked item. Legally 'LEGO' is not a word, it is a picture that just happens to include graphics that resemble the capital letters L,E,G and O. 'LEGOs' is a different symbol, as is 'Lego' or 'lEgOs' or any other permutation thereof and while a given audience might make the association with TLG products, there is no legally binding protections or assurances that such associations are valid. Anything other than "LEGO' used as an adjective is invalid (legally speaking) and using it as a noun (singular or plural) or using anything all caps, might get you're point across, but it is undermining TLG's claim the trademark and hastening in the day when companies like Mega-blocks can (legally) refer to themselves as 'legos' to further confuse well meaning but under educated grandmothers shopping for gifts.

The Civil argument is related to the legal one. As has been pointed out, TLG does not dictate the linguistic practices of the consumers, reporter, bloggers, etc. They can exercise their trademark to force someone from using their 'icon' without their permission, but if I refer to my bricks as 'legos' they can't stop me. I'm not using their trademarked symbol, I'm using a made up word that owes its etymology to their brand name, much the same as 'trekie' stems from the fan culture of 'Star Trek' but is entirely outside the domain of Paramount Picture's control. The Civil argument again sides against 'LEGOs' simply because TLG has asked people not to promote popular usage of words that would undermine their trademark.

The Grammatical argument is the most muddled of all and, speaking as someone who has studied English, Linguistics, and IP law, shows more how people can loose sight of the big picture while latching onto one isolated aspect of the issue than it does about the 'correctness' of how one should refer to one's LEGO collection. First, as has been pointed out, TLG does not control language and the purpose of language is to communicate. When a plurality of people agree to associate a given sound or symbol with a shared idea, a new word is coined. New words are created all the time, just as old words get redefined or go extinct. For example SCUBA started as an acronym and was used grammatically as a noun. Over time it became 'Scuba' and then 'scuba' and is now an adjective. No one person or organization decided this, people working and writing is the field just did what felt 'natural' (no doubt some people felt compelled to lecture others on their "misuse' of the term) and dictionaries documented the majority opinion.

Linguistically speaking, that's all we ever have - majority opinion. Reference books, classes, and prior examples can try to impose yesterday's rules and vocabulary, but language will drift and evolve with the needs and will of the majority (if you doubt this, try reading a few text messages from a teenager with a cell phone)

So given that language is what individual ethnologies declare it to be, where does that leave the "LEGOs' grammar argument? First there is the issue of 'LEGO' the trademarked adjective versus 'lego' the noun. Popular language drift (which nearly always begins acoustically) lets us declare the sound "leg-oh" to change parts of speech, but in doing so there is nothing "proper' about it. That is to say that it is both legally and grammatically incorrect (by current standards) to type "Lego' as a proper noun because, capitalized it violates the use of the brand. Writing it, as a noun, in all lower case however, is within generally accepted bounds of language drift, just as Xerox refered to a company, but when using the word to refer to a generic photocopy it is 'xerox' ( all lower-case due to the dilution of trademark).

Grammatically, you could write 'lego' as a noun, simply because the majority of your audience will understand to what you refer; and once you've written 'lego' you might as well write 'legos' ('legoes' or 'legii' whatever). It's a made up word to begin with, so what the plural should be, again goes back to majority opinion. The risk of course is that in making the term more generic, you are opening the door for non-LEGO products to be referred to as 'lego(s)'; you are playing a game of majority rules and the majority have already decided that all adhesive bandages are band-aids, all cotton swabs are q-tips, and all photocopies are xeroxes so why shouldn't all interlocking toy bricks be legos? (My spell checker already accepts it.)

So in summary, if you subscribe to the legal argument, you should write LEGO (all caps) and use it only as an adjective.

If you subscribe to the Civil argument and respect TLG desire to maintain its brand distinction, you should follow the legal argument.

If you want to go with the grammatical argument, you certainly can write "lego" or "legos" as a noun, but if you're going to take this argument to heart, never write "Legos" or "LEGOs" as, grammatically and linguistically, those capitalizations don't hold water - you can't make a grammatical argument on one front while ignoring several other rules at the same time (well, English is so convolved that you probably could, but you shouldn't it just makes a bad situation worse.)

[Vindicare]

Wow. Some people are really getting into this.

[RaincloudDustbin]

Why can't everybody agree that it's LEGO??? The fact is that IT THE BRAND NAME. LEGO is not even a word (in English) it's a brand name so all you 'LEGOs' need to get over that and move on. Like Lego Crazy said, can we not respect TLG enough to call the product by the correct term?

I'm getting bored of this, it's just the same names cropping up with people repeating the same data.

[Mister Phes]

Because the pluralisation of LEGO is not ungrammatical. The rules of grammar are not determined by TLG nor selective understandings of 'mass count nouns', or anything else brought up in this thread.

Please elaborate! When a proprietary word is created, who determines the correct grammatical usage, if not the entity who created it?

[Peppermint_M]

Shadows that Betty sounds like quite a gal, you'll have to introduce us Though Veronica might get a bit green eyed.

I say LEGO, people understand what I mean, know I speak of the brand and it's products but then within my circle of peers, Mega Blocks are Mega Blocks and so on. But then again I associate with intelligent and brand aware people most of the time.

[GregoryBrick]

Professors are tasked with teaching young minds to construct their words in a way that others will find easy to understand. And there are rules to it, whether they are often followed or not. Linguists have the task of defining what the language is and what it is changing to become and thus their concepts of these rules are necessarily more fluid. So I'm going to agree to disagree with you on the matter of correctness and be done with it.

I think you are right that we are coming at it from different perspectives. If you would like to 'agree to disagree' that is fine, but I am not posting to disagree but to understand what others are saying and obtain some clarity. The prescriptive rules of English teachers are stylistic conventions which are approved or rewarded in particular contexts; they are not grammatical rules. Furthermore, these conventions are often taught as 'rules which make language more clear' but this is incorrect - they do not necessarily make language any more clear, and they are often arbitrary conventions which people have been taught as The Right Way to Speak and Write, based on false authority, not grammatical fidelity.

Linguists are tasked with understanding what fundamental rules language follows (such as Subject-Verb-Object [sVO] structure) and this are far less fluid than the prescriptions of historically- and contextually- specific English classes.

This may be tangential on this forum; I am content to continue it or leave it here as a friendly disagreement.

Please elaborate! When a proprietary word is created, who determines the correct grammatical usage, if not the entity who created it?

Grammatical usage is determined through usage, as has been explained in this thread. I can make up a series of letters and say that people must use it a certain way, but my demands have nothing to do with what is grammatical.

[smellsgood]

Clearly, as others have said, the actual correct usage is using LEGO in all caps and as an adjective to modify "bricks," "sets," etc. If I'm being casual about it, I don't see that Lego (n, plural) is any more correct than Legos (n, plural), so I usually use "Legos" in that case, since it was what I always said as a child.

[Zhar]

I always use lego...;) (legos sounds bad, just dont use it)

[Fives]

It's LEGO, not Legos. You don't play or build with Legos, you play or build with LEGO bricks or parts or pieces or sets or Minifigs. All these are the plural versions of the components that make up the products created by LEGO. As much as this has likely been beaten to death in discussion, I had to add my two cents. When we say LEGO anything, we are referring to a company's products.

[Final Exit]

Lego, I always associate Legos with people that have no contact with anything Lego.

[Repeter]

Man-o-man, perhaps I don't get the whole"respect" thing. I figure the wads of money I throw at TLG for their great products shows how much respect I have for the company and their wares...a lot!

Also, as a fan of slang, vernacular and the nuances of dialect, both in history and present, I resent anyone or any company that tries to unnaturally curb language. If anything, TLG should be proud that their wonderful contribution to the toy world has become a popular, modern term. I have heard the term 'lego' used as a noun, adjective, even a verb! How versatile and cool is that?!

Consider this quote: "Tonight, I am going to build stuff with my LEGO bricks. Afterwards, I will sort my LEGO parts into some new bins".

The words 'bricks' and 'parts' could be dropped with no misunderstanding to the meaning of the quote. When I edit any writing, I often lose any words which do not contribute to the understanding of a particular sentence. When writing prose, perhaps extra words are nice, as they add to the 'sound' of the writing, which is important to the work.

In the end, I'll use the term as I see fit. I will also continue to give TLG gobs of my hard-earned cash and speak highly of the company. If this makes me disrespectful in some people's eyes, I can live with it.

Edited January 30, 2013 by Repeter

[badbob001]

Brainy Smurf says, "I see no issue or confusion using the same word to mean multiple things. Just smurf with it, you smurf."

[Repeter]

^^ Awesome.

[brodey1]

I don't really mind either way, but Lego sounds right to me.

[RaincloudDustbin]

Lego, I always associate Legos with people that have no contact with anything Lego.

Same here.

[tomylord]

Lego!

[Mister Phes]

Grammatical usage is determined through usage, as has been explained in this thread. I can make up a series of letters and say that people must use it a certain way, but my demands have nothing to do with what is grammatical.

That's the point I was getting at - if grammar is determined through usage then a governing body can dictate how it is used.

I.e. the Eurobricks Staff recognises "LEGO" as the grammatically correct plural on this forum irrespective of what may be considered grammatically correct elsewhere.

The risk of course is that in making the term more generic, you are opening the door for non-LEGO products to be referred to as 'lego(s)';

This is exactly why the LEGO Group wants to avoid dissolution of their trademark; so illegal counterfeit brands don't gain equal weight to the authentic product.

Respect or not, using "LEGO" in the intended manner assists to maintain brand integrity and distinguishes LEGO products from the inferior quality knockoffs.

[LegoManTroy]

L-E-G-O. It is simple. I know other countries might get it mixed up but it even has it in their logo.