It’s time for another entry in Kotaku‘s very sporadic series: Behind The Blog. Earlier this morning, Lego revealed a bunch of new Pokémon sets. So Kotaku’s newest member, Rebekah Valentine, hopped on the story to cover it for the site. But, being new to Kotaku, Rebekah still wanted to check in with the rest of the staff about a simple style question. This led to a strange conversation about Lego vs Legos and the plural form of Amiibo.
Here’s the lightly edited conversation that occurred in our work Slack after someone mentioned Legos. If you like this, look behind the scenes at Kotaku, check out this post about how a headline is formed.
Rebekah Valentine: What’s the site style on Lego? Do we just say Lego or LEGO?
Ethan Gach: Lego. Well, Legos actually.
Zack Zwiezen: No.
John Walker: Ethan is the worst of the trolls.
Carolyn Petit: Lego.
Ethan: I’m always telling my kid, “Please clean up your Lego.”
“The Legos are away.”
“L-e-g-o, I correct him.”
John: That you’re raising your children so badly has no bearing on the word. It’s funny how angry the Danes get about the American obsession with saying “Legos”.
Zack: I’ve never said it, and I’ll never say it
Kenneth Shepard: Wait, is Lego the plural form of Lego?
John: YES OF COURSE IT IS! Kenneth “part of the problem” Shepard.
Zack: I mean, you can also say, Lego bricks/pieces/sets…
Rebekah: Carolyn, is the plural of Lego on Kotaku dot com “Legos” or “Lego”?
Carolyn: Lego.
Kenneth: The thousand-yard stare I have going right now.
Kenneth: In my defense, my family was not a Lego family. I didn’t play with them growing up
John: Your parents didn’t have detachable heads?
It’s always made me feel like, “Americans don’t actually deserve to have it to play with.”
Rebekah: Because we… put an “s” on the end of a word to pluralize it?
Carolyn: Oh yeah, I don’t mind if people casually say Legos of course, but not in the hallowed halls of Kotaku dot com!
Zack: We shouldn’t use it on the site, yeah.
Ashley Parrish: Nerds.
Rebekah: Language is fluid! The purpose of communication is communication! The right way is whatever way everyone understands it to be!
John: Not for product names! You can’t just change a brand!
Ethan: The only thing more fucked up than Lego, is that it’s Amiibos.
Kenneth: Not…Amiibo?
Ethan: No, the plural of Amiibo is Amiibos per Nintendo.
Kenneth: Wait, then why did Amiibo as a plural catch on? What the fuck?
Rebekah: Sorry, actually “Amiibo” is the dative. The singular nominative is Amiibus, and the plural is Amiibum.
John: Rebekah outclevered us all.
Ethan: I swear I’m not making this up.
Zack: [Links to a Nintendo tweet officially confirming the plural of Amiibo is just Amiibo.]
A10: The plural of #amiibo is #amiibo, whether you have one or 12, or 18, or… #amiiboQuestions -BL
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) November 20, 2014
Ethan is trying to lead us astray.
Ethan: Maybe I’m mixing it up with Joy-Cons…
Rebekah: I think, as a website, we should strive to be as correct as possible, just not to the point of absurdity (all capsing LEGO), but also I don’t think the vast majority of regular people should give a flying burrito what brands want their nomenclature to be.
Carolyn: I agree.
Zack: This is correct. But if you say Legos in earshot of me, I will wince a bit.
John: It’s more of a Rest Of The World thing. The whole world says “Lego” except for you guys. Over here, one of the biggest supermarket chains is Tesco, but like 90% of people call it “Tescos.”
Rebekah: Of course, the real sign of language nerdery is that every one of us has very strong opinions on some aspect of this.
