How did you die?

[tsukinodeynatsu]

I have to say, I follow the rule with die from/of to the letter and I would have marked it wrong. (Of course, I had no idea that that was the rule until E04 mentioned it).

All you lot who say die from cancer just sound like uneducated chavs to me. It's like when people say 'haitch' instead of 'aitch'. My internal snob sensor goes PING-PING-PING CHAV ALERT! and I get this feeling of superiority.

I suppose you can take the girl out of England, but not the English out of the girl!

I did not say rule. I said "used more commonly with" and like Hans (or whatever his name is) pointed out, I wasn't perfectly accurate.

It might not be a written rule but it does seem to fit perfectly.

The difference between the road accident and injuries is because a road accident is a situation and you can't die from a situation - you die from things arising in the situation (in this case, having your skull smashed in). So you couldn't die from a road accident, but you could die from head injuries (sustained) in a road accident. So not an exception to the rule, just a different drawing of the tangible/intangible boundaries.

[Charlie Jack]

. . . to run a test through a text corpus. . . .

Not trying to prove anything, just got curious:

The search engine of the British National Corpus found nine instances of died from cancer.
http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+fr ... ysubmit=Go

It found 79 instances of died of cancer.
http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+of ... ysubmit=Go

It found five instances of died from lung cancer.
http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+fr ... ysubmit=Go

It found 15 instances of died of lung cancer.
http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+of ... ysubmit=Go

It found two instances each of died from gunshot wounds and died of gunshot wounds.
http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+fr ... ysubmit=Go

http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=died+of ... ysubmit=Go

[Whole Lotta Lotta]

Puppet. Don't you know that death is a taboo subject here in Taiwan. You have now cursed the board so that no Taiwanese will want to use it.

[E04teacherlin]

Puppet. Don't you know that death is a taboo subject here in Taiwan. You have now cursed the board so that no Taiwanese will want to use it.

I'm still standing, yeah yeah yeah.

[headhonchoII]

I have to say, I follow the rule with die from/of to the letter and I would have marked it wrong. (Of course, I had no idea that that was the rule until E04 mentioned it).

All you lot who say die from cancer just sound like uneducated chavs to me. It's like when people say 'haitch' instead of 'aitch'. My internal snob sensor goes PING-PING-PING CHAV ALERT! and I get this feeling of superiority.

I suppose you can take the girl out of England, but not the English out of the girl!

I suppose. Bob from blockbusters always got a haitch if I remember rightly. I guess you have never completed a gold run yourself.

[headhonchoII]

English IS the vernacular.....(goes looks up vernacular in the dictionary).

[Puppet]

Puppet. Don't you know that death is a taboo subject here in Taiwan. You have now cursed the board so that no Taiwanese will want to use it.

Great. Now the board will be dead.

Ugh. I did it again.

[Ducked]

Students ask me stuff like this sometimes. Taiwanese staff slightly more often.

The students are usually disappointed by my standard answer. The staff ALWAYS are.

But they have to learn.

Its.........................................Who cares?