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Comment by Dachande663 | Hacker News Reader

Please note, the plural form of LEGO is LEGO, not Legos. As per LEGO themselves[0].

[0] https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lan...

The Lego corporation is welcome to care about that for trademark reasons, but the rest of us don't really have a need to do so. "Legos" is clearly in common usage, failure to YELL ABOUT LEGO IN ALL CAPS and all.

you are of course right, and people have been trying to get the word lego to be used as a common term for all lego compatible bricks, but that's dangerous as for now lego can stop anyone from publishing anything about alternative brands using the term lego. so they have to avoid doing that or will get in trouble. better to avoid the term lego altogether and just call them bricks.

I use "bricks" (or the very neat tearm "Klemmbausteine" in German) in any context where Lego legal might want to interfere, and stick to Lego/Legos otherwise. It's a common term beyond any reasonable doubt by now, and corporations really shouldn't pry their greedy tentacles that deeply into everyday life.

right, i have a hard time avoiding the term lego at home with my kids too. the main problem for me though is that i am quite disappointed with how lego treats competitors that i just don't want to promote the lego brand anymore.

btw: german seems to have developed two terms. i don't know where it originated, but bluebrixx (and i don't know who else) uses the term "noppensteine".

we'll have to see which term becomes more popular. both are descriptive, but "noppen" is a rather rarely used word which feels a bit wierd when you are not used to it.

You might not really need to avoid using the term in a way that is understood by the general public. There are quite a few (United States) precedents for losing trademark if a term becomes genericized. For example: Asprin, Escalator, Flip Phone, etc.

There is a wikipedia list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Where are you from? In Britain I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone say "Legos", it sounds very American to me.

My main point here is that you probably don't run around saying LEGO, in all caps, not singular vs plural.

I understand why the LEGO corporation does it, but it's their problem, not ours, and we don't really need unpaid lego consultants running around lecturing people about the "correct" way to refer to them.

Yeah I was just surprised by the assertion that

>"Legos" is clearly in common usage

Given that I don't ever hear people using it.

Personally I get faintly annoyed by people saying "legos" the same as I would by people saying "sheeps" instead of sheep when referring to multiple, although I don't think I've ever corrected anyone over it.

i remember being galled by it in the late 80s, so this debate, at least, has been going on for some time.

> Given that I don't ever hear people using it.

I certainly do. The people around you are not a uniform sample of all communities on Earth.

That was exactly my point. The guy was saying people shouldn't correct an "incorrect" thing which is in common usage, but I was trying to emphasise that it isn't common usage everywhere.

I think it's fairly obvious why they want people to refer to them as a brand—they don't want to lose their trademark. If LEGO becomes so generic as to lose its association with the company that created it, then they lose out to all of the copycat companies. Velcro has done the same ("hook and loop, one side's a hook, the other's a loop"...).

> My main point here is that you probably don't run around saying LEGO, in all caps, not singular vs plural.

WHAT? DOESN'T EVERYBODY SHOUT WHEN THEY SAY LEGO??

we do when we step on them

Strange because as an American I've almost always heard to them referred as Legos. As a kid, my friends and I said, "let's play with Legos". My parents would say " get these legos off the floor". Seems odd to me to think of these phrases without the "s" on lego

I have a pet theory - in north america you have a popular snack called an eggo (pluralised to eggos) thats basically a waffle.

I think americans started calling lego legos because they were already calling eggos eggos. In the uk and europe generally we don't have eggos, so we don't have legos.

the catchphrase from the advertisement is "leggo my eggo", where leggo means "let go" which can't have an s appended. i have never had them so i am not sure, but i don't think they are that popular, and i haven't seem them referred to in plural

As a kid, I heard people say the phrase “legos my eggos”, (since the “leggo” had lost al of its association with “let go”).

Please, the Eggo corporation would prefer you refer to them as one EGGO or multiple EGGO waffles (tm)

Interestingly the company initially wanted people to call them "Froffles", but people apparently called them "eggos" due to the fact that they taste eggy. Then the company changed the name to "eggo" to reflect that.

I checked the wiki page and thought the contrast between the two approaches is interesting.

More likely, the Americans lengthen the e in the first syllable into almost a diphthong, like /eɪ/, and shorten the "o" in the second syllable into a schwa kind of sound that can comfortably be followed by /z/. Meanwhile, in British and many European accents, the first syllable is short and strongly stressed /ɛ/, and the o is /oʊ/, and you can't add an s without contorting your mouth in some horrible way. Which is why British people are so disgusted by "Legos". Try saying it with an American accent.

Yeah thats probably a more reasonable explanation than my theory. On the other hand its pretty common to say silos, speedos (both for swimwear and slang for a speedometer) and flamingos in British english and they have very similar endings.

As an American who grew up playing with and saying "legos," I've never heard anyone pronounce it the way you're suggesting.

I love pet theories so I hate to disagree. I've personally said the word "Legos" about 1M times in my life and it's mostly because Legos always come in groups, groups with a lot of items. You have to have a plural word to refer to them.

Also (child of the 70s) I am certain that I was calling mine Legos before I even knew about Eggo waffles. Third - boy I'm really piling on, sorry - I don't think I've ever referred to multiple Eggo waffles as "Eggos", probably because there's already "waffles" for that.

Yes, it's always "legos" when referring to the pieces (unless singular one piece), in my world.

It seems to be a fairly clear-cut geographical divide - Americans always pluralise, Britons never do. Without knowing but based on other lexical splits, I'd expect the majority of the rest of the Anglophone world to follow British usage, with Canada going either one way or the other. Usually Americans can cite 17c usage as a precedent - not in this case !

Ugh Lego and trademarks. My wife and I had Lego threaten to sue us for trying to import "legos" of mass destruction, it seems. We ordered a lego-compatible kit, which is ok I think, since it's only the lego figure that is patented Lego, the logo and name of course trademarked to Lego, and any brand cooperation to respective rights holders (eg Star Wars).

However, a kit without Lego names or logos, and without Lego-figures, and without any branding or copy of existing Lego-kit, should be ok.

But no. In some way, our customs withheld the package and we had lawyers for Lego threaten to sue us if we claimed rights to the package. They attached the Lego figure patent with the threat. We said, burn it, forget it, and acknowledge that we can sleep at night again please, but they forgot the last part.

It was a kit worth about 10€, and we have hundreds of €'s of Lego. Now we've stopped buying Lego. Also, less plastic crap.

Not to sound bitter, but the big friggin majority of kids toys industry is shit and the world would be a better place without it. Sorry for the steam :S.

the patent for the lego figure is expired too. they still have a 3d design mark on the figure which bluebrixx is working now to overturn.

you tried to privately import a single box? i can understand lego going against commercial importers, but private shipments of individuals who don't have any resources to defend themselves, that's just ridiculous.

However, a kit without Lego names or logos, and without Lego-figures, and without any branding or copy of existing Lego-kit, should be ok.

and they are. but you have to make the effort to defend yourself against the accusations, which a commercial importer can do, but it's totally unfair to put that on individuals for a single set.

which set exactly did you try to import?

there are a few large importers in germany, you may consider those. avoids the hassle...

You're right to be bitter, especially so because Lego has a pretty sordid history in this respect, the only reason they exist is because the founder copied someone else's IP and made a bundle of money on it. At the root of every great fortune there is a great crime. Oh, and the original inventor committed suicide. Those little details.

Bricklink, now Lego's property, also has checkered past. Fits the family.

They send bulk of these threats for any package that customs mark as "probably fake Lego". Depending on a country, if you refuse to get the product incinerated you'd have to pay storage fees for the time it takes to get an expert to assess the claim. Lego is doing great job in making sure custom officers have as little knowledge of the real situation as possible.

And to add to Lego's sis each set includes unnecessary unique bricks so that you can't remake a set without buying these custom parts. There are tens of thousands unique bricks so far and this trend is going strong.

and as soon as you start paying those fees the price advantage of personally importing alternative brands is lost. making importing only worth the risk for a set that you really want because lego doesn't have anything comparable.

Jesus, I’m gonna stop reading comments on LEGO posts here since every time there is a grammar war.

I and everyone I know has been calling them LEGOs since I was a kid in the 70s; that’s good enough for me.

I don't think we should allow corporations to dictate how we use language.

Even you're misconstruing their recommendation. "LEGO is always an adjective" implies there is no plural form, because there is no noun to begin with. You're supposed to say "LEGO brick(s)", apparently...

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