[OT] Woah, takes me back to the bad old days of a.r.k
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.kibology/search...
The nounal usage "Legos" just wasn't one I heard until I was exposed to this Internet. Correct en_AU usage is to deploy "Lego" as its own plural. Dialects!
Back on-topic, I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of using Lego when I was tutoring TCP/IP, but ... I was also kinda hoping this article would show some sort of robot-based assembly line with motors and (of course) a bit bucket for lost packets. To the Legotorium!
It's one of those wrongs that will never be righted - like brits calling Los Angeles 'Los Angelease', or those who, after all these years of hearing it pronounced correctly still insist on calling Linux 'Lynux'.
Although I very much disagree with the upvoted answer which essentially says we're free to invent words and call it english.
1 Company called Lego
1 lego brick or piece
1 lego set
1 lego construction
2 lego bricks or pieces
2 lego sets
To me, it's like 'sheep'. One sheep, flock of sheep - never 'sheeps'.
It's not so much the problem of pluralising the word, but by pluralising it, you're saying that individual piece is a Lego, which makes no sense to me.
EDIT: To prove my point. Take this story:
A man walks into an Apple Store. He buys 1 Apple MacBook, 2 Apple iPods and 3 Apple iPads.
He takes them home to configure and set up.
His wife walks in. Does she say:
a) Oh look, my husband is playing with his new Apple products
b) Oh look, my husband is playing with his new Apples
I like how the accepted answer pretty much declares "all pluralisation in English works by adding 's' or 'es'," completely missing out on other completely normal words, like "a basket full of fish[1]"...
"Fish" is not the correct English plural as a cursory examination of any English Bible written in the last 600 years will prove.
Other discussions on this site lead to the following addendum: When using the word "English" I mean English as spoken by the English in England. Not the USAian dialect.
And everything that liveth, which moveth, wheresoever the rivers shall come, shall live, and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be wholesome, and everything shall live whither the river cometh.
- 1599 Geneva Bible
Sheep is a bug in the language and the only reason it's not fixed is because it's not used very often. Like scissors and pants, which have correctly evolved to "a scissor" and "a pant" where I live. On the subject of Lego:
Lego the company - "Lego had high profit this year"
A lego heap - "Put away the lego when you're done with it"
A lego piece - "I'm looking for a 2x3 lego and three 2x2 block legos"
It's all very understandable and natural and you should just let go.
More than one people use the anonymous account, so I won't really sacrifice my anonymity by sharing. That said, I'm Bulgarian and we use both "ножица" (scissor, singular) and "ножици" (scissors, plural), both deriving from "нож" -- knife; the latter also means more than one pair of scissors. We never use "a pair of scissors". Unfortunately, I couldn't see if the singular or plural form came first, because the very first published Bulgarian dictionary from 1900 lists both. It also doesn't have the word for "pants", so I can't comment on that neither. In general though, we never use "a pair of" for things that are physically a single object, like a scissors or a pants; "a pair of scissors" would mean two distinct scissors. Of course, all languages have exceptions to every rule and for the above in Bulgarian it's "glasses". We do say "a pair of glasses". We also say "a frameS for glasses" speaking about a single frame for a single pair of glasses.
>A lego piece - "I'm looking for a 2x3 lego and three 2x2 block legos"
This one doesn't make any sense! You would say I'm looking for a 2x3 block and 3 2x2 blocks.
It all comes down to the fact that the name 'Lego' does not apply to an individual piece. It's a fuzzy area when it comes to brands, but they are normally more adjective than noun, although popular usage can make them noun, verb and adjective.
I don't really take it that seriously. I wouldn't correct someone if they were talking, only on the internet.
TCP/IP packets made with building blocks, brilliant. They could also be used as cuisenaire rods. I would be interested if anyone has used them in a nontrivial way to represent computable expressions (if you can do with alligators and eggs, you can do it with Lego)
