Never intended to be pluralised by the people who came up with the name. In German, I’d probably use it as it’s own plural (Räum mal dein Lego weg), but in English, pluralising it like that feels more natural to me (ten Lego bricks -> ten legos, three Aldi supermarkets -> three Aldis, two bottles of water -> two waters).
I get where you’re coming from but I think your examples are at the level of abbreviating “Lego set”, not “Lego piece” because of the groceries analogy. (I’m not comfortable with abbreviating “Lego set” that way either to be honest, but I admit that wherever the line into personal preference is, this is over it.)
Would you refer to a bag full of Aldi own-brand produce as “Aldis”?
In the comic, it’s bricks. For me, sets is a lot more context dependent. I’m not against it in principle, for what is a set but an amalgamation of bricks, but it only feels natural to me for a larger number of sets. In the end, all of this is pretty subjective.
As to the store brand example - most supermarkets around here don’t use their own brand name for their store brand products, but instead come up with brand names, sometimes different ones per product category. Still, I’d argue that even a selection of one of those brands would be a lot more varied than a bag of lego sets. The one might be vegan yogurt, tofu, and oat milk, while the other will mostly be cardboard boxes with plastic bricks, a manual, and maybe some stickers. One of them is a lot more closely related than the other.
Never intended to be pluralised by the people who came up with the name. In German, I’d probably use it as it’s own plural (Räum mal dein Lego weg), but in English, pluralising it like that feels more natural to me (ten Lego bricks -> ten legos, three Aldi supermarkets -> three Aldis, two bottles of water -> two waters).
I get where you’re coming from but I think your examples are at the level of abbreviating “Lego set”, not “Lego piece” because of the groceries analogy. (I’m not comfortable with abbreviating “Lego set” that way either to be honest, but I admit that wherever the line into personal preference is, this is over it.)
Would you refer to a bag full of Aldi own-brand produce as “Aldis”?
In the comic, it’s bricks. For me, sets is a lot more context dependent. I’m not against it in principle, for what is a set but an amalgamation of bricks, but it only feels natural to me for a larger number of sets. In the end, all of this is pretty subjective.
As to the store brand example - most supermarkets around here don’t use their own brand name for their store brand products, but instead come up with brand names, sometimes different ones per product category. Still, I’d argue that even a selection of one of those brands would be a lot more varied than a bag of lego sets. The one might be vegan yogurt, tofu, and oat milk, while the other will mostly be cardboard boxes with plastic bricks, a manual, and maybe some stickers. One of them is a lot more closely related than the other.