Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC
Le mardi 17 décembre 2019, 12:56:46 CET Colin Watson a écrit :
>[…]
> The one that
> immediately comes to mind is that "Lego" tends to be treated as a count
> noun in the US and as a mass noun (or in compounds such as "Lego
> bricks") in the UK. Once speakers on each side get over calling each
> other uneducated for saying it "wrongly" (which is a fascinating
> sociolinguistic exercise in itself), you can come up with several
> plausible reasons why this makes sense in each dialect context, but I've
> never seen one that survives attempts at being extended into a
> generalisable prescriptive rule.
The LEGO Company is very sensitive about the (ab)use of
their trademark. They don’t want it to become a common word
like kleenex or klaxon.
So maybe their “say ‘Lego bricks’ not ‘Legos’” mantra has
had more weight in the UK than in the USA.
--
Sylvain L. Sauvage
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