different to and from

[John Dunn]

According to one source I tracked down

<http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dif1.htm>

'different from' is first recorded in Shakespeare, with earlier usage being 'different to/unto'.  The same source notes, as was pointed out earlier, that 'different than' is used by many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British writers.  This may therefore be one of those instances (like 'gotten') where American English preserves a usage that has died out in Britain.  If so, the death of 'different than' in Britain may not have been entirely due to natural causes, but was perhaps hastened by generations of school teachers armed with stout canes and a resolutely Latin-based approach to the structures of English.

John Dunn.



-----Original Message-----
From: "Paul B. Gallagher" <paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:20:42 -0500
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] different to and from


Fascinating.

A quick look at these data would seem to suggest that:

1) "Different to" is deprecated in British English in favor of 
"different from." The 10.8% figure seems to suggest that it is making 
inroads into the written language.

2) "Different than" is deprecated in American English in favor of 
"different from," but widespread in the vernacular. The 7.0% figure 
seems to suggest that it may be making some inroads into the written 
language. "Different to" occurs in American English only in error, in 
foreigners' speech, and in contexts such as those Loren pointed out.

I'd be interested to know how old these vernacular forms are ("different 
to"in BE, "different than" in AE) -- in the context of the suggestion 
that foreigners may have influenced American English (and no doubt they 
have), I'd like to know whether we can reject the hypothesis that 
"different to" is the native form and "different from" is foreign. And 
taking off my scientist's hat and donning my native speaker's hat, I'd 
/really/ like to reject "different to" as a recent British invention. ;-)

I'd also be interested in comparable data for the prescribed form 
"differentLY than."

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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