different to and from

[Alina Israeli]

Here is an interesting chart: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/ 
fxdiffer.html

    The Collins Cobuild Bank of English shows choice of preposition
after "different" to be distributed as follows:

                			 "from"  "to"    "than"
                 		-----   ----    ------
U.K. writing    	87.6    10.8     1.5
U.K. speech     	68.8    27.3     3.9
U.S. writing    	92.7     0.3     7.0
U.S. speech     	69.3     0.6    30.1


On Dec 11, 2007, at 4:10 PM, Deborah Hoffman wrote:

> 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.
>>

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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