# A critical question of language **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 12, 2002, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250 "2002-04-12T15:45:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/61 "2021-03-10T16:34:05Z")
Really? I just watched that video again and the very first two kids say, clearly to my ear, “LAY-go my AY-go.” It’s not even close. Later in the same commercial, yes, the voiceover says it as “EGG-go” (“_Light, golden Eggo waffles…_”). But then the little girl says at the end, just like her siblings did, “Lay-go MY ay-go, please.” It stands out to me because I would NEVER say “LAY-go” for “leggo” as “let go”. It sounded weirdly forced to me even as a kid, and the only reason to do it would be to rhyme it with “AY-go”, which also stood out to me (and which is why I mentally associated the product as a homonym for “Lego”, which I thought of as the normal way to say that). You must be correcting it to “egg-go” as you hear it because it’s _definitely_ not what they’re saying phonetically. I am going to do a blind test of various friends and relatives now later today to see how they pronounce “Lego”. I am going to guess most of them, if not all of them, will say “LAY-go”. (It’s almost certainly how any Spanish or Italian speaker would read the word LEGO, not knowing it was a concatenation of a Danish motto _legt godt_, and there are just so, so many Hispanics and Italians where I grew up.) ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/62 "2021-03-10T16:36:31Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > But then the little girl says at the end, just like her siblings did, “Lay-go MY ay-go, please.” No she doesn’t. 🤨 She says Egg-oh. I feel like you’re somehow conflating this with the brand Faygo. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/63 "2021-03-10T16:37:59Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Legos are bricks, not blocks. There are three Lego thingies on the floor. 😈 ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/64 "2021-03-10T16:40:02Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > There are three Lego thingies on the floor. The current favored term is either “thingamabob” or “whatchmacallit”. Please adjust your posting style accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/65 "2021-03-10T17:16:52Z")
“Lego blocks”? I am not being paid by that company to represent and/or advertise their toys, so if I ask someone how many Legos it took to build their their life-sized replica of Galactus and the first response is, “Don’t you mean ‘Lego Brand Building blocks’?”, my first response will be, “I’m sorry. I meant to say ‘If someone pushed this thing over, how long would it take you to pick up that crapload of Lego Brand Building Blocks?’” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/66 "2021-03-10T17:24:01Z")
I could see the necessity of calling them “Lego Blocks” if there was a need to differentiate them from “Lego Tampons”, “Lego Motor Oil” or “President Lego”, but there isn’t so I don’t. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/67 "2021-03-10T17:31:15Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > > [@robardin](#): > > > > But then the little girl says at the end, just like her siblings did, “Lay-go MY ay-go, please.” > > No she doesn’t. 🤨 She says Egg-oh. I feel like you’re somehow conflating this with the brand Faygo. Well now I’d like to have a poll of responses from other Dopers upon viewing that video, because the clip is exactly as I remembered it from my childhood and it has always stuck in my mind as an unnatural pronunciation. Why would I imagine it? I must be hearing it. I just don’t see how you don’t hear it. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/68 "2021-03-10T17:32:08Z")
Well played Sir, well played. Now, where have you dropped the ‘i’ in aluminium? Go pick it up or you can’t have any more nice things. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/69 "2021-03-10T17:39:13Z")
OK, now I’ve actually watched that YouTube clip, I do see what you’re getting at. There are some weird vowel sounds going on at the beginning. And I agree with you that a Spanish/Italian speaker would naturally pronounce “Lego” differently from what I’m used to. But, I’m not convinced that a) the pronunciation of “leggo” in that ad and how a Spanish speaker would pronounce “Lego” is the same, or b) that either one of those is best represented by “ay” (as usual, we should really use the IPA, but I don’t know it well enough). In other words, I don’t think the first syllable exactly rhymes with the English word “hey” (or “hay”, equivalently - to me), though it is kind of similar. I think my original objection was that “Hay goes in a horse” doesn’t really rhyme with “Legos in a horse” or “Eggos in a horse”. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/70 "2021-03-10T17:50:58Z")
OK, watching it again, and at the beginning it sounds like they are putting an extra emphasis on the word “Eggo.” I wouldn’t describe it anywhere close to “AY-go” though. The narration straight up says “Egg-oh” and when the girl speaks again at 00:26 she no longer has the same inflection from the beginning, and says “Legg-o my egg-o.” I mean the slogan only works because it’s supposed to be “Let go [of] my Eggo.” No one would say that as “Late go.” (Well OK perhaps not _no one_, but it brings to mind Cletus from The Simpsons." ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/71 "2021-03-10T18:23:47Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Well now I’d like to have a poll of responses from other Dopers upon viewing that video, because the clip is exactly as I remembered it from my childhood and it has always stuck in my mind as an unnatural pronunciation. Why would I imagine it? I must be hearing it. I just don’t see how you don’t hear it. FTR, I hear “Aygo” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/72 "2021-03-10T18:36:33Z")
The proper plural for “Lego” is “Legopodes.” ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/73 "2021-03-10T18:48:33Z")
The LEGO corporation wants you to call them LEGO bricks because they’re worried about them losing their trademarkable brand identity they way Kleenex and Xerox did. After all they did lose their patent on the lego connection system a while ago, which is why I have a Mega Construx Castle Grayskull half-built on my table right now - made of bricks resembling and compatible with LEGO bricks. So that’s what _they_ want. I, on the other hand, am not concerned with protecting their trademark, so legos it is. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/74 "2021-03-11T18:26:59Z")
I do hear something approaching “AY-go” but not quite. It’s the French é or the Spanish e (which is NOT an “ay” sound. An “ay” is a diphthong. A Spanish “e” is not). So, here we go with the IPA: “eh” as in “let” is /ɛ/ “ay” as in “lay” is /eɪ/ “e” as in Jose is /e/ What I hear in “Eggo” in the commercial is mostly the last one, and I think the second one at the end. For most English speakers/listeners, all those probably most closely approximate “ay” but it’s not quite “eh” nor “ay.” If you just pronounce the first half of “ay” then you got it. What’s going on is something called prevelar raising, and occurs in some English dialects where an /ɛ/ before a voiced velar (fancy name for a “g”) moves up in the mouth towards an /e/. It can also happen with “a” sounds, where “bag” moves up to an /ɛ/ sound or even as far an /e/ sound. If you Google “bag-raising.” At any rate, growing up here in Chicago, where we have our own set of vowel raising, I do raise the “e” in both “eg” and “leg” most of the time. I can’t seem to find any literature documenting this type of raising in the local accent, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t an idiosyncratic pronunciation I had. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2021, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/75 "2021-03-13T07:09:13Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > The proper plural for “Lego” is “Legopodes.” I’d say the plural must be Legi. To clarify the pronunciation, when written it might be spelled as Leggi. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2021, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/76 "2021-03-14T11:40:40Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > BTW, if calling the bricks “lay-go” blows your mind, if you Google for “lego pronounced as laygo” you’ll find that there is a third “accepted” way to pronounce it: > > … wait for it … > > “LEE-go”. (What?) > > But I guess I cannot judge. Mind = blown. People are weird. And why would anyone pronounce it the Spanish way when Lego is Danish? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2021, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/77 "2021-03-14T14:44:36Z")
One possible reason is given above dealing with accents and how some English speaker “raise” the vowel before the “g.” It has nothing to do with pronouncing “Lego” as in Spanish or any other languages. And, in Danish, Lego _is_ pronounced what sounds something like “LAY-go” to an English speaker. (Sound sample in first few seconds:) [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-8B5pg9mrmI/hqdefault.jpg "Historien om LEGO [dansk]") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8B5pg9mrmI) ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/78 "2021-03-15T12:15:39Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > > [@robardin](#): > > > > BTW, if calling the bricks “lay-go” blows your mind, if you Google for “lego pronounced as laygo” you’ll find that there is a third “accepted” way to pronounce it: > > > > … wait for it … > > > > “LEE-go”. (What?) > > > > But I guess I cannot judge. > > Mind = blown. People are weird. And why would anyone pronounce it the Spanish way when Lego is Danish? Because how would one know it was Danish if you see the boxes on the toy store shelf since childhood? Besides, how do Americans (I can’t say for Brits) pronounce German product names like “Birkenstock” or “Adidas”? Hint, it’s not how they’re pronounced in German at all. Consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel words ending in -o or -a “look” Spanish/Italian, especially if that is a fairly dominant second language, so it seems natural to me to rhyme “Lego” with, say, “Prego” (a brand of pasta sauce), especially if you’re mainly familiar with it as a product name on a shelf and have never really considered where it comes from (I was at least 12 years old before I found out Lego was from Denmark specifically, versus “Europe”). Nobody says “preggo” for Prego, I trust? Well I do hear people say “pee-za” instead of “peet-tsa” on the TV or radio from time to time, so I’m guessing probably some people do. Anyway, it’s not like I’d have thought “Leg-go” was a jarringly wrong pronunciation; I actually never noticed people pronounced it two ways until this thread made me realize it. But the commercial for Eggo waffles did jar me into noticing it (and mocking it) even as a child, specifically to refer to Legos (ha ha, they rhymed “eggo” with “lego”, what the heck?), which is what made me think of it! And as for the IPA angle, those last two are fairly subtle distinctions I can hear if I listen closely (“lay” versus “Jose”), but do not make such a distinction when speaking. I wouldn’t be surprised if either vowel sound can come out of my mouth for those words, but mentally I map them to the “ay” sound - to me an E is either “eh” or “ay”, anything in between is some kind of unconscious slurring. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/79 "2021-03-15T12:19:16Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > One possible reason is given above dealing with accents and how some English speaker “raise” the vowel before the “g.” It has nothing to do with pronouncing “Lego” as in Spanish or any other languages. > > And, in Danish, Lego _is_ pronounced what sounds something like “LAY-go” to an English speaker. (Sound sample in first few seconds:) > > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8B5pg9mrmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8B5pg9mrmI) Haha, thanks for that. Because in my life, I have actually been to Denmark and visited the original Legoland in Billund, by train, and I’m sure I’d heard “LEGO” a gazillion times in Danish or said by Danish people (in English), and never, ever noticed they said it any differently than I did! (And it’s the sort of thing I usually do notice!) ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250/80 "2021-03-15T14:55:00Z")
Good explanation. It’s true a lot of products aren’t pronounced as in their original language. If there are TV or radio ads people probably copy that pronunciation, otherwise they take their best guess. And since English has so many borrowed words we do treat words differently depending what language we think they come from. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-critical-question-of-language/103250.md?page=5)