What are the odds?!

[Pythonfriend]

@ satomi325

going a bit offtopic, but to whom it may concern:


i agree that pastels are het super pastels, because here the het and the super somewhat cancel each other out, and its still understandable.

i have seen breeders actually sell fires as "het black eye leucistic" or as "het super fire", and i have seen breeders sell yellowbellys as "het ivory".

but can you give me cases where breeders advertise a pastel also as het pastel? or a yellowbelly also as het yellowbelly? or a spider also as het spider? or an ivory as a yellowbelly?

the actual use of the shorthand "het", in natural language, like on this forum and on breeder websites, is really limited to recessives. except for exception you pointed out, "het super XYZ". once you leave the scientific realm where language is really precise and delve into natural language, other rules apply, break them, and you sound like you are from mars. and actually you dont leave that territory but carefully avoid doing so in your own post which kinda proves my point

but now we are delving into linguistics. the method used to prove stuff in linguistics is really different from the natural sciences. to prove that a certain expression is used in a certain way, you start with a large sample of text in that language, search for all instances of that expression in the text sample, and check for context. searching the internet for the string ball python "het pastel" gives you one craigslist ad for a het pastel, a sentence that says "there is no such thing as a het pastel", a het pastel cornsnake, a het pastel boa, and a pastel het orange ghost BP, you get the idea. only 2270 results in total. that is quite a failure, with that data no linguist will challenge you when you say "het pastel" is not part of the english language.

now for ball python "het ivory" you get 15100 results, checking for context reveals most of them refer to yellowbellys. searching for yellowbelly ball python "het ivory" gives 11900 results, which confirms it, and shows that there is a contextual link. for comparison, ball python "het albino" gives 72700 results. of course these numbers are not worth much on their own, you need to sample the context of the search results and see if its actually being used in the way you expect.