• BassTurd@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    If I have a mixed bucket of LEGO bricks and dump it in a pile, do I have a pile of LEGO or LEGOs? The fact that LEGO is plural was revealed to me within the last week, but I don’t know if it’s the same when talking about the individual parts vs ten packs of LEGO. It doesn’t feel right to say that the pile is a pile of 100 LEGO.

    • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org
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      26 days ago

      It’s a collective noun, like sand. You have individual bricks that make up a pile of LEGO. I don’t like it, personally, and just keep saying LEGOs.

      • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        But ‘sands’ gets used as well, like when talking about collective different type of sands. So there would be nothing wrong with saying “I have different color LEGOs” if your intention is as “green LEGO and yellow LEGO”… At least that’s how I read it, right?

        • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org
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          26 days ago

          I wish I really understood it. LEGO is based in Denmark (sorry if I’m wrong here) so it is kind of a weird translation to English. My understanding is that an individual piece is a brick and the collective is LEGO. As far as “sands” is concerned, that is typically used for whole, or regions of, deserts. Once again, I really dislike the usage of LEGO as a collective noun in English. It might make sense in Dutch, but I have no clue how to read that language, let alone speak it.

          • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            Danish, not Dutch.

            I’ve spoken to enough Dutch people to know that no matter how hard you try, nothing makes sense in Dutch.