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Old 11-12-2019, 10:30 AM   #31
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Default Re: Occupational Forensics

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English doesn't believe in consistent rules for grammatical number (or case, or...), largely because it stole words from multiple languages with different rules.
"Her English is too good," he said, "That clearly indicates that she is foreign."
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Old 11-12-2019, 10:31 AM   #32
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I was once asked if I was European just, because I cross my 7s and Zs.

I only started, because my poor handwriting otherwise makes them hard to distinguish from 1s and 2s.
What kind of European? FWIW I cross my 7s and in the rare cases I use Z I don't cross it. The former was presented as totally optional at school, and Icelandic doesn't use Z.
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Old 11-13-2019, 01:21 AM   #33
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I believe many native English speakers use "dice" for both singular and plural.
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Old 11-13-2019, 01:45 AM   #34
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Default Re: Occupational Forensics

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I believe many native English speakers use "dice" for both singular and plural.
That was my point. Only grammar pedants and roleplayers say "die," and maybe croupiers or professional backgammon and Monopoly players would too, but I haven't come across any of them.
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Old 11-13-2019, 01:57 AM   #35
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That was my point. Only grammar pedants and roleplayers say "die,".
Eh, most people don't talk about dice much at all, but I've certainly met people who are neither grammar pedants nor roleplayers who know that the singular form is die. It's just one of those weird words that you learn the conjugation of.
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Old 11-13-2019, 07:21 AM   #36
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Default Re: Occupational Forensics

Okay, "only" might be exaggerating, but nonetheless there's a strong tendency.
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Old 11-13-2019, 10:40 AM   #37
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Default Re: Occupational Forensics

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Eh, most people don't talk about dice much at all, but I've certainly met people who are neither grammar pedants nor roleplayers who know that the singular form is die. It's just one of those weird words that you learn the conjugation of.
Technically, only verbs have conjugations. Nouns have declensions in the classical languages, but I don't think even that word applies for English nouns, which don't have case endings. On the other hand, Wikipedia refers to "declined for gender" and "declined for number" as alternatives to "declined for case," so maybe the broader use is valid.
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Old 11-13-2019, 09:31 PM   #38
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Default Re: Occupational Forensics

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Right.



Professional cooks get so many small cuts and small burns that the law of large numbers comes into effect. Sure, sometimes a cook gets a burn on her chin from hot toffee, or gets stung under the eye by a wasp, accidentally pours a litre of hot oil over his off hand, or spills 25 litres of boiling water down his front. But time and time again, almost every cook gets a slow accumulation of burns on one hand and forearm and cuts on the other.



I have not only observed, but actually discussed it with professional cooks. Not every random distribution is uniform.
I thought the point of the initial observation was to act as sufficient evidence for a fictional character to label someone a cook.
I was just mentioning that seeing someone with burns on one hand and cuts on the other isn't super reliable.
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Old 11-14-2019, 03:00 AM   #39
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That is the problem with all of this Sherlock-Holmesery.
Fast getting into the Samuel Vimes theory of evidence at this point it appears...
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Old 11-14-2019, 08:48 AM   #40
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I thought the point of the initial observation was to act as sufficient evidence for a fictional character to label someone a cook.
I was just mentioning that seeing someone with burns on one hand and cuts on the other isn't super reliable.
It doesn't need to be a smoking gun to be useful. When the character encounters someone with burn marks on their dominant hand and cut marks on their off hand, that's a clue that the person may be a cook. When the character encounters a cook who lacks such traits, that's a clue that the person may not be who they say they are. In the former case, it gives the character cause to investigate the lord's kitchen staff to see if any of them are the masked man/woman who tried to steal the macguffin. In the latter case, it gives the character cause to be cautious around the suspicious cook, in case he/she's actually the hidden assassin the character was warned of.

And, of course, it doesn't have to be useful to the character to be useful to the story. Sending the character on a wild goose chase when the would-be thief isn't even a cook, or distracting the character with a suspicious cook when it's actually the busboy who is the assassin, is perfectly legitimate.
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