Dragaera

Literary Disappointments (was: The LKH thing)

Mon Feb 17 10:11:00 PST 2003

My edition (2nd) of Fowler's agrees that "different to" is acceptable
but cites the OED as sayiing "different than" is "now usual".  He says the
objection to "different to" comes from the incorrectness of "differs to".
It certainly sounds wrong in American English - what's Twain's comment,
England and America, two countries separated by a language?

- Philip

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Mark A Mandel wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, John Klein wrote:
>
> #points and question marks in the same sentence, the phrase "different to",
>
> No argument with most of what he said, but "different to" is normal
> British usage where USAians say "different from" or "different than".
>
> -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
>    Philological Busybody
>    a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
>
>