Lego vs. Legos: Americanism? Regionalism?

[Lynne Murphy]

Lego is what it's called in Europe.  I deal with this a little in this blog
entry:

<http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/07/countmass-nouns-potato-egg-tax-sport.html>

Lynne

--On Wednesday, July 25, 2007 8:10 pm -0500 Darla Wells
<dlw3208 at LOUISIANA.EDU> wrote:

> Legos, Bossier City, Louisiana maybe around the 70's. Definitely Legos,
> San Bernardino, California, 1990, Wichita Falls, Texas, 1996.
> Darla
>
> With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn
> a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with. (Terry
> Pratchett)
>
> ---------- Original Message -----------
> From: Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:55:06 -0700
> Subject: Re: Lego vs. Legos: Americanism? Regionalism?
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> ----------------------- Sender:       American Dialect Society
>> <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Lego vs. Legos: Americanism? Regionalism?
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------
>>
>> Legos, New Jersey, born in 1963.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>> Behalf Of James Callan Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 11:57 AM To:
>> ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Lego vs. Legos: Americanism? Regionalism?
>>
>> On his blog, Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings recently discussed what one
>> reader considered an error in his book Brainiac: Lego vs. Legos.
>> Jennings says "Legos," which LEGO (the company) and many Lego fans
>> don' t care for. As Jennings says:
>>
>> Some households say "Let's play with Lego." Others (a majority in
>> America, I'm guessing) say, "Let's play with Legos."
>> (http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=496)
>>
>> I say "play with Legos" -- born in '70, raised in Wisconsin's Fox
>> Valley and Milwaukee suburbs.
>>
>> How does the Lego vs. Legos issue break down elsewhere? National
>> boundaries? Regions?
>>
>>  -- James Callan
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> ------- End of Original Message -------



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org