Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymous | Hacker News Reader

Sheep is a bug in the language and the only reason it's not fixed is because it's not used very often. Like scissors and pants, which have correctly evolved to "a scissor" and "a pant" where I live. On the subject of Lego:

Lego the company - "Lego had high profit this year"

A lego heap - "Put away the lego when you're done with it"

A lego piece - "I'm looking for a 2x3 lego and three 2x2 block legos"

It's all very understandable and natural and you should just let go.

View on HN

Like scissors and pants, which have correctly evolved to "a scissor" and "a pant" where I live.

At the risk of your anonymity, anonymous, can you say where this is? I haven't heard that usage before.

(Interesting find while googling for that usage — iCarly and perhaps Rhode Island apparently say "a scissors": http://danwarp.blogspot.com/2009/07/icarly-scissors-huh.html)

More than one people use the anonymous account, so I won't really sacrifice my anonymity by sharing. That said, I'm Bulgarian and we use both "ножица" (scissor, singular) and "ножици" (scissors, plural), both deriving from "нож" -- knife; the latter also means more than one pair of scissors. We never use "a pair of scissors". Unfortunately, I couldn't see if the singular or plural form came first, because the very first published Bulgarian dictionary from 1900 lists both. It also doesn't have the word for "pants", so I can't comment on that neither. In general though, we never use "a pair of" for things that are physically a single object, like a scissors or a pants; "a pair of scissors" would mean two distinct scissors. Of course, all languages have exceptions to every rule and for the above in Bulgarian it's "glasses". We do say "a pair of glasses". We also say "a frameS for glasses" speaking about a single frame for a single pair of glasses.

>A lego piece - "I'm looking for a 2x3 lego and three 2x2 block legos"

This one doesn't make any sense! You would say I'm looking for a 2x3 block and 3 2x2 blocks.

It all comes down to the fact that the name 'Lego' does not apply to an individual piece. It's a fuzzy area when it comes to brands, but they are normally more adjective than noun, although popular usage can make them noun, verb and adjective.

I don't really take it that seriously. I wouldn't correct someone if they were talking, only on the internet.

"the only reason it's not fixed is because it's not used very often."

What is your view on the word 'children'?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com