Isnt it just the plural of whatever you happen to be talking about i.e. Lego men, Lego sets, Lego bricks. Exanple sentence: I used a million Lego bricks to build 100 Lego Kevins.
Yeah, I think that's right if "Lego" is an adjective. But is the plural of "Lego" (as in the bricks themselves) "Lego" or "Legos"? I would have said "Legos" myself, but the video claims the plural is "Lego," like "one deer, two deer" or "one sheep, two sheep." More interestingly: the main guy who makes the claim in the video isn't consistent in his own pluralization.
AI suggests that "Lego" should only be an adjective, hence the need for phrases like "Lego bricks" or "Lego Kevins." And the official spelling, according to the manufacturing company, is LEGO, all caps.
Should I be flattered, offended, or ashamed that a single Lego Kevin requires 10,000 Lego bricks?
This is a trans-Atlantic thing. I would say Lego is a collective noun and would never add an 's' to it. You Yanks are wont to do the opposite. And yet when it comes to Speedos, we both reverse our positions. To a Brit, there cannot be a singular Speedo. And don't get me started on maths.
And I don't know what scale a 10k-brick Kevin would come out to. I would hazard a guess that 10k Lego bricks are probably far less than we imagine.
I've got a unit on collective nouns, with some small mention of the US/UK divide, coming up on Substack.
Yes, to us Yanks, "maths" as a countable noun is hilarious. One math, two maths, three maths... To us, math is uncountable, a mass noun. But as I say in a Substack post, I can see both cultures' point of view on the matter.
Look, I'll never say the British way of doing things is wrong, even if I have certain pet peeves (as I'm sure you do about US English). If anything, around the time of Noah Webster, there was a definite breakaway as Webster codified differences in spelling between US and British English (color, not colour; meter, not metre), so the fault for a lot of those differences is ours. On top of that, I think the British way of doing certain things is more logical than the American way, such as putting the comma outside of the closing quotation mark:
US: "Sit down," he said. UK: 'Sit down', he said.
Punctuation inside the quotes should reflect the tone of the quoted speaker's speech, so what's a comma doing in there? In that situation, the British way is more logical.
So when I criticize people's prose, I try to be mindful of who's writing. In other words, while certain locutions in British English are correct in the UK, they would be wrong in the States, and vice versa. I think that's fair, don't you?
I do think that's fair. A lot of the translation I do has to be rendered in US English which drives me batty. In that sense, I was reprimanded recently for using 'got' in the sense of 'have', is that not common over there? (Think: I've got a cold as opposed to I have a cold.)
My biggest pet peeve about US English is when people say "I could give a crap" when they mean "I couldn't give a crap". Where do you stand on that?
A lot of conscientious Americans also complain about mentally sloppy expressions like "I could care less" when what is really meant is "I couldn't care less." I agree: that's one to drive me crazy.
As for "I've got a cold," I honestly don't see what the problem is. Why would anyone be reprimanded for that? That's perfectly passable American English. "I've got a dog," "I've got three kids," etc.
I know of some British folks, though, who dislike the participle "gotten" in the present-perfect locution "I've gotten fat." If I'm not mistaken, Brits tend to say, "I've got fat" unless they've lived in the States for a few years. Then they go back across the pond and get slagged by their friends for having slid into barbaric American English.
Don't ask me, I seemed fine to me but the F4 who was reviewing it insisted it wasn't proper American English.
Another one was reckon instead of think. I'm sure I can imagine the word reckon being used in plenty of US films and dramas. But I suppose it may be a regional thing, rather than standard US, whatever that is.
Hey, I'm an F4! Is your guy another half-and-half or a full-on gyopo?
"I reckon" is more of a Southern-dialect thing. Say it with the appropriate US Southern accent: "Ah reck'n yer raght." I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are folks in the UK who use "reckon."
That said, I can think of some non-Southern uses of "reckon," as in: "How many enemy troops do you reckon are down there, sergeant?"—asked by a Harvard-educated lieutenant who will get shot in the head by the second reel of the war movie.
There's also the not-uniquely Southern phrase "a reckoning," referring to suffering the consequences of one's bad actions—most recently heard in "Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning." Another phrase that's not uniquely Southern would be "beyond our reckoning," as in, "The types of alien life out there are likely beyond our reckoning." (reckoning = ken)
Interesting to note that, in German, "die Rechnung" refers to the bill at a restaurant. I guess when you think about it, when a resto tabulates your costs, it's a reckoning of how much you owe.
All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.
AND A NEW RULE (per this post): comments critical of Trump's lying must include criticism of Biden's or Kamala's or some prominent leftie's lying on a one-for-one basis! Failure to be balanced means your comment will not be published.
Isnt it just the plural of whatever you happen to be talking about i.e. Lego men, Lego sets, Lego bricks. Exanple sentence: I used a million Lego bricks to build 100 Lego Kevins.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that's right if "Lego" is an adjective. But is the plural of "Lego" (as in the bricks themselves) "Lego" or "Legos"? I would have said "Legos" myself, but the video claims the plural is "Lego," like "one deer, two deer" or "one sheep, two sheep." More interestingly: the main guy who makes the claim in the video isn't consistent in his own pluralization.
DeleteAI suggests that "Lego" should only be an adjective, hence the need for phrases like "Lego bricks" or "Lego Kevins." And the official spelling, according to the manufacturing company, is LEGO, all caps.
Should I be flattered, offended, or ashamed that a single Lego Kevin requires 10,000 Lego bricks?
This is a trans-Atlantic thing. I would say Lego is a collective noun and would never add an 's' to it. You Yanks are wont to do the opposite. And yet when it comes to Speedos, we both reverse our positions. To a Brit, there cannot be a singular Speedo. And don't get me started on maths.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know what scale a 10k-brick Kevin would come out to. I would hazard a guess that 10k Lego bricks are probably far less than we imagine.
I've got a unit on collective nouns, with some small mention of the US/UK divide, coming up on Substack.
DeleteYes, to us Yanks, "maths" as a countable noun is hilarious. One math, two maths, three maths... To us, math is uncountable, a mass noun. But as I say in a Substack post, I can see both cultures' point of view on the matter.
Look, I'll never say the British way of doing things is wrong, even if I have certain pet peeves (as I'm sure you do about US English). If anything, around the time of Noah Webster, there was a definite breakaway as Webster codified differences in spelling between US and British English (color, not colour; meter, not metre), so the fault for a lot of those differences is ours. On top of that, I think the British way of doing certain things is more logical than the American way, such as putting the comma outside of the closing quotation mark:
US: "Sit down," he said.
UK: 'Sit down', he said.
Punctuation inside the quotes should reflect the tone of the quoted speaker's speech, so what's a comma doing in there? In that situation, the British way is more logical.
So when I criticize people's prose, I try to be mindful of who's writing. In other words, while certain locutions in British English are correct in the UK, they would be wrong in the States, and vice versa. I think that's fair, don't you?
I do think that's fair. A lot of the translation I do has to be rendered in US English which drives me batty. In that sense, I was reprimanded recently for using 'got' in the sense of 'have', is that not common over there? (Think: I've got a cold as opposed to I have a cold.)
DeleteMy biggest pet peeve about US English is when people say "I could give a crap" when they mean "I couldn't give a crap". Where do you stand on that?
A lot of conscientious Americans also complain about mentally sloppy expressions like "I could care less" when what is really meant is "I couldn't care less." I agree: that's one to drive me crazy.
DeleteAs for "I've got a cold," I honestly don't see what the problem is. Why would anyone be reprimanded for that? That's perfectly passable American English. "I've got a dog," "I've got three kids," etc.
I know of some British folks, though, who dislike the participle "gotten" in the present-perfect locution "I've gotten fat." If I'm not mistaken, Brits tend to say, "I've got fat" unless they've lived in the States for a few years. Then they go back across the pond and get slagged by their friends for having slid into barbaric American English.
Don't ask me, I seemed fine to me but the F4 who was reviewing it insisted it wasn't proper American English.
DeleteAnother one was reckon instead of think. I'm sure I can imagine the word reckon being used in plenty of US films and dramas. But I suppose it may be a regional thing, rather than standard US, whatever that is.
Hey, I'm an F4! Is your guy another half-and-half or a full-on gyopo?
Delete"I reckon" is more of a Southern-dialect thing. Say it with the appropriate US Southern accent: "Ah reck'n yer raght." I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are folks in the UK who use "reckon."
That said, I can think of some non-Southern uses of "reckon," as in: "How many enemy troops do you reckon are down there, sergeant?"—asked by a Harvard-educated lieutenant who will get shot in the head by the second reel of the war movie.
There's also the not-uniquely Southern phrase "a reckoning," referring to suffering the consequences of one's bad actions—most recently heard in "Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning." Another phrase that's not uniquely Southern would be "beyond our reckoning," as in, "The types of alien life out there are likely beyond our reckoning." (reckoning = ken)
Interesting to note that, in German, "die Rechnung" refers to the bill at a restaurant. I guess when you think about it, when a resto tabulates your costs, it's a reckoning of how much you owe.