LEGO is an association of the words "leg" and "godt", which directly translates to the words "play" and "well". Therefore, it is LEGO and not Legos as is often referred.
They're not doing it though because they care about that, they just don't want to lose their trademark because people in reality use it synonymously for any type of these bricks, regardless of brand.
People don't use it synonymously for any type of brick. Americans do. The only people I've experienced referring to LEGO bricks as "Legos" are Americans. I've been around LEGO bricks since 1991, and I've never heard them referred to as "Legos".
LEGO may be a large, billion dollar company, but it is my sincere belief that they actually care about the history and origins of LEGO. But that's just my theory.
I strongly disagree. In other European countries people associate any lego brick with well, these brick types. If you showed something from BlueBrixx, Mould King or Cobi to someone else, they always say "oh you like Lego!" until you correct them that the company rarely makes such sophisticated sets anymore. This topic sparked a debate in Germany specifically because of LEGOs legal attempts to retain their monopoly.
If we treated loanwords with the same rules as their origin language, we'd say "pizze" instead of "pizzas" and not pluralize Japanese words like "futon" or "tsunami".
Sure, but a deliberate misspelling doesn't change the intention. It was, as you said, just for trademark purposes. The word still has an obvious origin that doesn't align with how we commonly use it today, especially since it isn't pronounced out loud any differently.
I don't understand your point. It's a reference, sure, but they are homophones. They are two different words with two different spellings meanings. One is a proper noun describing a company (sometimes used as an adjective), the other is a noun describing a number (isn't an adjective).
That's like saying nothing's gonna stop you from using the wrong they're/their/there because in speech they sound the same, but if you wrote it down everyone would know you used the wrong one or don't know how to spell.
If "Playwell" were a proper noun referring to a product, "Playwells" would be an appropriate pluralization in English. M&M, for example, means Mars & Murrie ( https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/murrie-william-f-r-1873-1950/ ), so when you have M&M's you're having "Mars & Murries", which wouldn't make sense either if it weren't a proper noun. Just to be clear, though an apostrophe-s ( 's ) usually conveys ownership (my house's gutters), it also conveys pluralization in the case of an initialism like M&M. The M&M's company refers to a single M&M as an M&M ( https://www.mms.com/en-us/faqs , under the business section at the bottom).
But thats how language works. Words get taken from other languages and change. Then it's a matter of how they're commonly used. Legos is the plural form of the word in English. It's not up to the creator to dictate it's use. Google is a verb.
If we treated loanwords with the same rules as their origin language, we'd say "pizze" instead of "pizzas" and not pluralize Japanese words like "futon" or "tsunami".
Even parts of speech aren't set in stone, for loanwords as well as native words.
"Share" and "Weird" were originally nouns, and the verb/adjective was derived from there.
I don't think anybody cares if y'all in the UK want to say "Lego bricks" or whatever. But nobody better try to tell us how we should say it in the US. The meaning and syntax of language is, always has been, and always will be determined by usage. American English and UK English are different dialects. Nothing wrong with that.
Fwiw, it's not relevant who "invented" the language, as dubious and meaningless of a statement as that would be. The US has the plurality of native English speakers, making it the most common variety of the language. Still, that doesn't mean the US usage determines what the UK should do. But certainly not the other way around, either.
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u/VagaBond_rfC Jul 30 '24
LEGO is an association of the words "leg" and "godt", which directly translates to the words "play" and "well". Therefore, it is LEGO and not Legos as is often referred.
Have a great day! 🇩🇰