Two bees, or not two bees?

While reading through Penny Arcade this morning, I came across a discussion on Double Fine's new game Trenched, which led to some interesting linguistic research.

The game offers the ability to customize your character, which Tycho says can result in
"[l]umbering Assault murderwalkers that emit doom, (comparatively) lithe Engineering chassis that deal the bulk of their damage with Heavy Turrets and cheap upgrades, or Standard cores that split the difference."

It's not often that you hear the word "chassis" used in general conversation, much less the plural form, which led me to question what the actual plural of the noun is. Is Tycho correct in his usage here? A quick trip to Dictionary.com gave me the surprising results.

"Chassis" is the correct spelling of both the singular and plural forms. In this aspect, the word falls into the same category as nouns like "moose" and "deer." "Chassis," however, has the unique distinction that, while spelled the same, the two forms are actually pronounced differently, probably due to the French influence. Dictionary.com gives the pronunciation for the singular as [chas'-ee, -is, shas'-ee] and the plural as [chas'-eez, shas'-].

If anyone out there is aware of other nouns like this, I'd love to hear about them!

Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/7/1/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chassis

Being Hollywood, there just has to be some added element of complication to the sometimes inscrutable world of relationships, and boy, do those screenwriter love disorders.

Now, I know there are all sorts of disorders out there, but what are"screenwriter love disorders?"

Source: http://oudaily.com/news/2009/aug/28/movie-reviews/

Another one from Kotaku:

While the prequel was heavy on the hand-held camera, REC 2 employs camera mounted on the soldiers' helmets. It's a bit like watching a first-person-shooter.

This almost sounds like Engrish. We need either an article (employs a camera) or a plural (employs cameras). Frankly, based on the plural, soldiers' helmets, I would expect the latter.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5280847/this-spanish-movie-looks-like-some-first+person+shooter

The moment you've been waiting for...

As promised, here comes some World War Z info. I have to say, this is a fantastic book. Thoroughly enjoyable. Nonetheless, as with all print media, this edition has a few errors. If you want to follow along at home, I will be referring to the paperback edition, ISBN 978-0-307-34661-2.

First off, in the early part of the book, there is a footnote stating:

5. Unlike most country's main battle tanks, the Israeli "Merkava" contains rear hatches for troop deployment.

Here is an example of confusion in possessives. The intended meaning is "main battle tanks of most countries," where "countries" is plural. Instead, we have a singular country. So the correction would be "most countries' main battle tanks."

Source: The aforementioned edition, p. 44