As a former South Australian, I’m used to people from the rest of Australia mocking my accent.
Apparently I say “dance” in a posh way. Apparently I say “school” in a funny way. (No I don’t – you do).
But the word that gets me mocked the most is “Lego”. See, I’ve always said “Laygo”. It was only when I moved to Sydney that I realised that everyone else said “Leggo”. I tried to change my pronunciation, but I kept forgetting, and everyone kept telling me how wrong I was.
For a while, I wondered if “Laygo” was just a weird pronunciation my family had. But on a recent trip to Adelaide, my kids wanted to go to the local Lego shop. And you know what it’s called? Laygo.
Not Leggo, but Laygo.
That got me wondering. What if South Australians were pronouncing the word the correct Danish way – Lego having been created in Denmark – and everyone else was using some incorrect anglicised pronunciation? What if South Australia was right and the rest of the English-speaking world was wrong?
It was a thrilling possibility.
There’s a good chance you’re saying some of these words wrong too. Sorry. Post continues after video.
I contacted the owner of Laygo, Steve Campbell. He told me that he’s from the UK himself, and has always pronounced it “Leggo”.
“When I opened up my first store in Adelaide, my business name was a different name,” he explained.
“But when everyone came through they kept calling the product ‘Laygo’ and I couldn’t get my head around it. So in the end I thought, if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Top Comments
I grew up in SA, always pronounced it 'laygo', but since I have spent most of my adult life in QLD, have switched to 'leggo'.
The word originates from the Danish words for 'play well', "leg godt", I'm not sure of the pronunciation however I have seen several documentaries about the Lego company, and all of the managers/designers etc use the 'leggo' pronunciation, so I'm sticking with that.
For some reason my first post was detected as spam? Anyway, laygo? Lol, I have never ever heard anyone anywhere say it laygo. But yes, South Aussies I have noticed do have a peculiar accent. For example, both Christopher Pyne and Penny Wong both say ARE for our. I've always wondered what that was all about. They are both from different parties, yet from the same state. If for example, they are talking about policies during the election campaign, a sentence from either one of them would sound like this: "We have are (our) policies costed and the costings of are policies will be released before the election". Curiously, I have noticed that Amanda Vanstone never speaks like that though, so, I don't know. shrugs.
Accents are fun though. I can usually tell if someone is a fellow Qlder (almost every sentence ends in an inflection so it sounds like a question), if someone is from NSW (they speak flat and monotone), or Melbourne (they speak fast, and say narn for nine). It's all good. As long as we can understand each other.
PS Yes I think we can all agree on Americans adding an 's' to lego. It drives me spare. They also say anyways for anyway, so I guess they just like elongating words. Where as we shorten them ie servo, ambo, arvo. Language and dialect is rather fascinating when you think about it.
hahaha, the irony. my first reply on here mentioning how many of my posts get "detected as spam" was, you guessed it, detected as spam! and my reply to your comment on one of the Anzac day articles...