"Different than......".

When I was a kid I was taught "different from".

Mmm, and yet I've only noticed it recently. I wouldn't mind if it was just a difference between English and Scottish English, but it's as though everyone is adopting it.

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:
When I was a kid I was taught "different from".

TICK

Oh dear. The importance of the apostrophe argument.

I too was taught a very specific and proper English. In recent years I have come to see things differently. Start with "The Unfolding Of Language" by Guy Deutscher. Ask yourself how language has survived if all anyone does is destroy it? How did it acquire structure if it's so random? Why dis we feel the need to move on from so called classical languages that supposedly acquired a kind of structural perfection?

Then read the book. You'll never post on a thread like this again other than to observe that all language is an ever changing thing which is being simultaneously destroyed and created.

People use different differently! To criticise it is mostly accidental ignorance. To understand it is very enlightening.

I think that the default position must be that any newly-adopted usage is grammatically incorrect.

Neologisms to describe new concepts are fine - indeed necessary. 'New' grammatical constructs are not.

Fraser

Fowler's Modern English Usage, the definitive tome on these matters, says:

"The commonly expressed view that different should only be followed by from and never by to or than is not supportable in the face of past and present evidence or of logic..."

The Oxford Guide To English Usage (1993) adds: "Both different to and different than are especially valuable as a means avoiding the repetition and the relative construction required after different from in sentences like 'I was a very different man in 1935 from what I was in 1916.'

"This could be recast as 'I was a very different man in 1935 than I was in 1916' or 'than in 1916'.

"Compare The American theatre, which is suffering a very different malaise than ours', which is greatly preferable to 'suffering from a different malaise from that which ours is suffering from'

"A wiser course, perhaps, is simply to avoid different than if you happen to be writing or speaking in Britain."

So there you have it.

What is wrong (or at least clumsy) is the use of different as a synonym of various, separate, distinct. Thus 'I went to different places in London on my holidays' or 'Different people told John he had done the right thing buying a secondhand NAP250' are both iffy, to say the least.

Prof. K

quote:

Originally posted by Mike Hughes:
Oh dear. The importance of the apostrophe argument.

I too was taught a very specific and proper English. In recent years I have come to see things differently. Start with "The Unfolding Of Language" by Guy Deutscher. Ask yourself how language has survived if all anyone does is destroy it? How did it acquire structure if it's so random? Why dis we feel the need to move on from so called classical languages that supposedly acquired a kind of structural perfection?

Then read the book. You'll never post on a thread like this again other than to observe that all language is an ever changing thing which is being simultaneously destroyed and created.

People use different differently! To criticise it is mostly accidental ignorance. To understand it is very enlightening.

How about pompous? As opposed to, or different from, pretentious? Which may also be distinct and different from preeningly ostentatious?

Of course sometimes all three and more may be combined in an accurate description of some.

Others may find they have differing opinions.

Though perhaps not many?

quote:

Neologisms to describe new concepts are fine - indeed necessary. 'New' grammatical constructs are not.

I know this will sound absurd to some but if this rule had been applied throughout human history we'd all be speaking Indo-European Root Language.

Sadly for those of us who are attached to certain linguistic forms, Mike H is right.

Indo or Proto Indo?

Mike

Read Deutscher guys. It's a revelation. What you're describing is not "wrong". It's a piece of magic. You're actually seeing language change/creation in action. It's how language works not a corruption.

Language evolves. 'Correct' uses become lost, new ones accepted.

This grumpy old man hates the current usage of 'impact'; as in 'these cuts will impact our services'. For me things have an impact upon a service, or a wall hit by a car suffers from the results of the impact.

There, I feel better now.

Bruce

Different than and different to are both wrong and grate every time I hear them ... different from is, of course, correct. Compare to is wrong (sorry Mr Wordsworth) when it should be compare with; not only do these misconstructions annoy, but also the tendency to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Different than and different to are both wrong and grate every time I hear them ... different from is, of course, correct. Compare to is wrong (sorry Mr Wordsworth) when it should be compare with; not only do these misconstructions annoy, but also the tendency to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

ROTF, they may grate with you, but they're not actually wrong (see my post above).

K

In a fairly similar vein, I found a superb article by Howard Jacobson in saturday's Independent. If you Google: ' Jacobson Independent dumbing down ' you'll find it.

Chris

Something differs from something else. Not something differs than or differs to something else.

Hence different from.

Anything else is nonsensical.

IMO different than is wrong and clumsy.
"From" seems best fit, but "to" can be argued for.

Methinks , thou wouls't rather have'n the language neer change?

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
Language evolves. 'Correct' uses become lost, new ones accepted.

'New' grammatical constructs do not represent 'evolution', they are simply changes. They add nothing. Neologisms are the evolutionary linguistic constructs. Hence my earlier statement that the latter are necessary and the former not.

Fraser

I agree with the principle that language evolves and would add that we here are showing our age.

We will hopefully be dying off as the horrors to come emerge fully. It is expected that the 'street language' that kids increasingly use will taint the concept of correct grammar and sentence construction beyond repair.

Geoff

After the great fire of London in 1666 Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral. Queen Anne the reigning monarch said that the rebuilding work was "awful, artificial and amusing."

Good job language changes, otherwise he might have clocked her...

quote:

Originally posted by Fraser Hadden:

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
Language evolves. 'Correct' uses become lost, new ones accepted.

'New' grammatical constructs do not represent 'evolution', they are simply changes. They add nothing. Neologisms are the evolutionary linguistic constructs. Hence my earlier statement that the latter are necessary and the former not.

Fraser

Change is not always evolution in terms of language? That seems to be based on some judgement of what is 'good' or 'right'. Surely language exists not in the pages of a learned manual but in the lives of the society which uses it? Evolution is perhaps a bad metaphor for the development of language but it gives a flavour of the haphazard changes and unpredictable survival of new trends. I don't understand how new words are fine, and new usage cannot be.

Your initial post and this later one appear to suggest that the grammatical rules of a language remain fixed (by whom? and when?) so that each alteration is therefore wrong. Can that really be so? Surely if I read the works of Geoffrey Chaucer I encounter grammatical rules that had changed by Charles Dickens' time?

Bruce

Language changes, and English is, like it or not, probably the world's most fluid language, particularly in terms of vocab (this, along with its relatively simple - if sometimes eccentric - grammar and lack of inflection means it is reasonably easy to learn).

Nelogisms have been a part of the language for 1,400 years - since before the time of Beowulf (the oldest text in a modern language - if of course Old English (or to be more precise, west saxon) can be described as modern )

The last edition of the OED had some 600,000 definitions, and it is likely that the number of words in English is close to, if not higher than, one million.

If you have a large Empire - as we had - your language gets "infected" by not only the tongues of the conquered peoples, but also by creoles and pidgins.

One of the things that has always amused me is the Littlejohn/Bufton Tufton/Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells/Daily Mail view that horrible homosexuals have, since the 1960s, somehow appropriated the word gay (as in happy, joyfui, jolly etc) for their nefarious purposes and to "promote homosexuality".

Before it meant happy, gay actually meant loose, slovenly (as in morally). A "gay girl" was in fact a "slut".

To get back on the subject I'm not so worried about speech, or even informal written English (eg texting, kids sending emails or messages via Facebook etc) but there is a thing called "formal written English" which should taught to every child - FWE is also the greatest bulwark against the most insidious threat to our glorious language, which is not street-slang, or hoody-talk, but jargon-ridden business-speak; what we hacks used to call "bullshit" .

Bruce,

1. No. Change is not synonymous with evolution. Evolution implies improvement, either by acquisition of a
desired characteristic or shedding of an undesirable one. If I drop a priceless vase onto a stone floor, I
can hardly argue that the vase has 'evolved', though it has obviously changed rather dramatically.

2. There has indeed to be a judgement of what is 'good' or 'right'. How else would you learn or teach a
language? How would you write a language textbook, if all expression were fluid?

3. I made no claim that language need be absolutely fixed. Change that brings improvement (i.e. evolution, as
defined above) is fine. It may take the form of a simpler means of expression without - and this is key - any
loss of sense. It may simply take the form of more beautiful expression or flow of concepts. My objection is
to change that confers no advantage. Further, most change, oddly, seems to be introduced by those who have
not mastered the original grammatical forms. This isn't generally a good thing, is it? You wouldn't, for
instance, drive in a car - far less fly in an aircraft - designed by one with a limited grasp of original
automotive or aeronautical principles.

4. Finally, you reference the shifts between Chaucer's and Dickens' times. Can you really argue that the
ritualistic gruntings of today represent an 'evolution' of language from either of those times?

Fraser

Fraser

Thanks for replying. I find this stuff interesting.

A few thoughts

1) Evolution implies adaptation. Modern language has adapted to the new areas of usage, such as text etc. It is less sophisticated (you could argue) in these forms, but better adapted to the medium, and therefore improved is it not? It has even added a graphic element in recent years

2) Surely the judgement is about what is clear and what is not. It is also about what is accepted and what is not. The textbooks are out of date, always. Sure, some solid grammatical foundations must be respected to retain understanding and consistency but I'd argue that a textbook of modern English is an anachronism. Language changes not just over time but regionally too, are those local variations any less valid?

I'd always want to retain the richness of language, and to ensure that kids in particular are exposed to it however the key to me seems that they need to experience complex concepts through language and vice versa rather than be exposed to a rigid framework of 'correct' language which must be deviated from at their peril. For me language is the tool not the endpoint.


3) I like the idea that 'good' change should allow more beauty of expression, your original statement in this thread stated that all change in usage was wrong by definition and this would appear to be a qualification. As for suggesting that only those who have mastered the language be allowed to alter it; this seems pretty arrogant. Language belongs to the user, surely? You don't have to show a certificate of competence before you are allowed to use it, or modify it.


4) One man's 'ritualistic grunt' is another man's poetry. James Joyce is utter nonsense to many.

Bruce

One of the "new uses" of words that irritates me intensely is the use of the word leverage as a verb. The verb is to lever in the present tense. What adds to the irritation is the pronunciation using the short "e", ie the American version, rather than the correct (in the UK) long "e".

steve

quote:

Originally posted by Paper Plane:
One of the "new uses" of words that irritates me intensely is the use of the word leverage as a verb. The verb is to lever in the present tense. What adds to the irritation is the pronunciation using the short "e", ie the American version, rather than the corrct (in the UK) long "e".

steve

I really would advise against working for an American bank in that case. Never mind their use of leverage; their inability to use the same date format as us; there's not a day goes by without a noun being verbed.

S.

quote:

Originally posted by Paper Plane:
One of the "new uses" of words that irritates me intensely is the use of the word leverage as a verb. The verb is to lever in the present tense. What adds to the irritation is the pronunciation using the short "e", ie the American version, rather than the corrct (in the UK) long "e".

steve

People being different from (sorry Tony Lockhart) you irritates you? Or maybe it's people being other-than-English that you find irritating? Either way, what an irritating world you must inhabit. Bummer.

Myself, I rather like that there are so many different variations on the theme.

I'll add for no reason in particular that bromance, frenemy, and turducken were added to the OED this year. (However, the Naim website software still says they are misspelled.)