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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, I with Americans would stop using _legos_ as the plural. (Most of) the rest of the world uses _lego_ as a mass noun.

The company itself insists though that it should only be used as an adjective :D: https://x.com/LEGO_Group/status/1359856214591627269?lang=en

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Not Legos or Lego: LEGO. All caps.

For example: https://www.serious.global/LEGO-SERIOUS-PLAY-Trademark-Guide...

(It also says when you speak the word you're supposed to shout it as if you're scaring off birds. If you look down there on page 11.)

Danes are weird.

In Danish, they are called »legoklodser« (i.e. Lego bricks); seldom is the word capitalised.

Yep. It's a brand style thing probably so they can trademark it.

PS: I had the pleasure of having eusocial Danish neighbors growing up. The guy worked for Spectra-Physics as a laser technician and drove a Wankel '81 Mazda RX-7 that I could hear revving away towards work every morning.

I'm curious how you're using the word "eusocial" here, because I've only heard it used to describe the structure of bee or ant (or naked mole rat) colonies.

Really social, never bothered by anything, absurdly friendly, and cool peeps. And, of course, Scandinavian furniture and always smoking weed. :o)

Stipulative definitions since meanings of words vary from person-to-person:

"Eusocial" to me means "prone to socializing".

"Prosocial" to me means "aware of the interests of the group and seeks to positive contributions to the groups and individuals."

"Asocial" to me means "neural or indifferent towards others."

"Antisocial" to me has multiple meanings either "avoids people", "doesn't get along with people", or "is indifferent to or against the interests of others".

MF LEGO, all caps

> If you look down there on page 11.

There's only 8 pages in the linked PDF.

If anything, the insistence of the Lego company ensures that I won't ever say it that way. I'm not here to protect their trademark, and I resent them trying to cajole me into it.

If we're going to be really American and overuse caps, shouldn't we also be sticking in all kinds of unnecessary periods? Like: L.E.G.O.

Then someone can set about to backform the phrase being acronymed.

LEGOs Engender Genius Offspring! (supposedly)

Lego Enables Garish Objects ?

> If we're going to be really American

It's Danish though :-)

Just for the record, the name "Lego" comes from »leg godt« which means to play well. The earliest toys from Lego were not the iconic bricks we know today.

In Finnish (spoken in another Nordic country) it's plural "legoja" / "legot", with the singular only used as attribute, e.g. "legoukkeli". It's been this way at least since the 80s.

Exercise in futility. We like our S's. I don't know a single person in the Midwest who doesn't say Meijers and Krogers, despite neither having an S in their name.

same in the UK actually. The supermarkets Tesco, Aldi and Lidl are frequently pronounced as Tescos, Aldis and Lidls.

Perhaps were pronouncing them as a hyphenated possession rather than a plural.

Right. Sainsbury's was the leading supermarket of most of the 20th century and probably influenced the way we refer to all of them

(It's Sainsbury's because it was John Sainsbury's shop)

That is different. For example “Lidls” is actually “Lidl’s”, which is not plural and grammatically correct. Same as saying “I’m going to the doctor’s”.

That's not the same.

That's a possessive s, so it's Tesco's. As in "we're going to Tesco's" or "I'm just nipping down to Aldi's". Not Tescos or Aldis.

We effectively drop the word 'store'. So it's a shortened form of "I'm nipping to the Tesco's store". The 's indicates that Tesco owns the store.

We use the same phrases when going to someone's house, as in "I'm going to Sarah's" which is a shortened form of "I'm going to Sarah's house".

We don't use an s in Lego, so we use Lego like Europe, not Legos.

Edit: My partner just pointed out there are some exceptions (and weird ones). Asda is a store like Aldi or Tesco, but we say "I'm going to Asda". But that could be an artifact of their marketing jingles or perhaps because it is originally an abbreviation of Associated Diaries which already has an s. We also have a pharmacy chain called Boots, and it's "we going to Boots" not 'we're going to Boots' ".

Just curious are you American? Because British people say shop, not store :)

Not always. Maths will never sound right to me. Even my spellchecker hates it.

> who doesn't say Meijers and Krogers, despite neither having an S in their name

Those aren't pluralizations with an s though. They're possessives with an apostrophe s.

LEFOs is a pluralization. Like Kleenexes instead of "Kleenex tissues."

Does it matter that much? Either way, people are adding an S where it doesn't belong. Kroger commercials are careful to call it Kroger. People call it Kroger's.

Whether it's Legos or Lego's is just a matter of spelling. The problem is identical.

Legos makes sense for me as a short form of “different boxes of lego”. Similarly I’d be fine with e.g. “plant milks”, “kinetic sands”, etc.

This and Visas always make my heart skip a beat.

English has a small, shrinking set of irregular plurals, and new loan words don't deserve special consideration, much less foreign loan word brands.

Octopuses. Indexes. Legos.

They insist likely due to the “Kleenex” effect. Couldn’t find a good reference, but once an item becomes generic, it can loose copyright.

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/smarter-living/how-a-bran...

Not copyright, trademark. Two very different things, with very different laws.

Sure, gp misspoke in saying "copyright" but correctly linked to a relevant article about trademarks and was correct in the sentiment that owners of widely used brand names need to be vigilant about their intellectual property.

You can find a reference by looking for "generic trademark"

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