American English Official Grammar Reference Book

[Deborah Hoffman]

That's so interesting. The British usage of "different to" had been seared into my brain as "proper" by many tedious high school English discussions of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca with its leitmotif "She's so different to Rebecca" spoken by representatives of the upper classes. Now I'm wondering if the author intended us to glean that those speakers were in fact speaking sub-standardly, or whether this usage has changed since the 1930s.
   
  >Date:    Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:26:27 +0000
>From:    William Ryan <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
>Subject: Re: American English Official Grammar Reference Book
>
>I hesitate to join in a discussion which arises from a query about US 
>usage but I would disagree slightly with Paul Gallagher's note on 
>'different to/from/than insofar as it relates British English. I think 
>any careful British editor would accept only 'different from' at almost
>any level of publication. 'Different to' is commonly heard in British 
>colloquial English but would still probably be corrected by any British
 >school teacher of English; many would regard it as being 'uneducated'. 
>'Different than' is occasionally heard in Britain but I suspect sounds 
>American to most and is unlikely to be used by educated British 
>speakers, although the OED gives a substantial list of writers who have
 >used this construction.
>Of course, editors and authors of style books can hardly escape the 
>orthodoxies of their youth, and recommended 'good practice' in written 
>English will commonly differ from current colloquial usage even of 
>educated English speakers in any part of the English-speaking world. I 
>went to school at a time when a split infinitive would be seized upon
 >by a teacher as a vulgar error. Even now my editorial blue pencil twitches
 >involuntarily when I see one, despite my recognition of the historical 
>and linguistic absurdity of the convention and the awful contortions
 >one sometimes has to perform to observe it. We may have no Academie to 
>legislate in these matters, as has been pointed out, but the
 >conditioned responses of old style education (e.g. from a slap on the hand if you 
>got it wrong), the fear of social solecism (for British English remember 
>Pygmalion/My Fair Lady and the still not entirely forgotten U/nonU 
>debate), or the dread of a sneering review, have strong normative 
>influences.
>Will Ryan


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