re: Dice - Die page 6

"Different to", the 20th century Briticism, is illegal in AmE.

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

Exactly, and you also demonstrate our superior hyphenation techniques.

Matti

"Different to", the 20th century Briticism, is illegal in AmE.

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

Is "different from" legal?

Nikitta a.a. #1759 Apatriot(No, not apricot)#18
ICQ# 251532856
Unreferenced footnotes: http://www.nut.house.cx/cgi-bin/nemwiki.pl?ISFN "I mean, would you* mess with someone wearing a big orange straw hat? Well, *you prolly would, but I prolly wouldn't. Unpredictable, that's the key, keeps people on edge." Carl LHS Williams (sheddie)

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

Is "different from" legal?

Compulsory!

Paul
My Lake District walking site (updated 29th September 2003): http://paulrooney.netfirms.com
Please sponsor me for the London Marathon at:
http://www.justgiving.com/london2004

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

Exactly, and you also demonstrate our superior hyphenation techniques.

Do I seem different to you?
Does he seem different to you?
Or is it just that he's different than you?
Maybe you're different than me. Or different than I am. (DIfferent to I?)

Anyway, you seem different to me.

"Different to", the 20th century Briticism, is illegal in AmE.

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

"Different than" is more a Tonycooperism than an Americanism, I'd say. Look to AUE for evidence.

"Different than", the 20th-century Americanism, is illegal in BrE.

Is "different from" legal?

Here's our FAQ entry:
"different to", "different than"

"Different from" is the construction that no one will object to. "Different to" is fairly common informally in the U.K., but rare in the U.S. "Different than" is sometimes used to avoid the cumbersome "different from that which", etc. (e.g., "a very different Pamela than I used to leave all company and pleasure for" Samuel Richardson). Some U.S. speakers use "different than" exclusively. Some people have insisted on "different from" on the grounds that "from" is required after "to differ". But Fowler points out that there are many other adjectives that do not conform to the construction of their parent verbs (e.g., "accords with", but "according to"; "derogates from", but "derogatory to").

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
(END QUOTE FROM FAQ)

Best Donna Richoux

/nq]

Exactly, and you also demonstrate our superior hyphenation techniques.

Do I seem different to you? Does he seem different to you? Or is it just that he's different than you? Maybe you're different than me. Or different than I am. (DIfferent to I?) Anyway, you seem different to me.
Seems different to me,
sounds different to me,
looks different to me
there are lots of legitimate uses of "different to." A certain amount of nonsense is send about "different" a month or so we had a thread in which a lot of people posted opinions without even noticing that that discussion wasn't even about "different" but "differently"!

Here are some perfectly legitimate uses of "different to" located with Google:
Something different to look forward to.
Eric Idle brings something different to Paramount.

From Being Different to Making a Difference.
Elephants Are Different to Different People.
Superhumans would look different to us.
Smart growth means something different to almost everyone

Best Donna Richoux

As I suggested to MEow, the best strategy is to adopt the linguist habits of your fellow players. If you ... you just as odd for using 'die', and there is just a chance that uneducated people wouldn't even understand you.

People consider me odd anyway, but I think that it would make sense for me to lean more towards BrE than AmE, due to me being European, despite neither of them being "natural" to me.
IRL I'm not likely to run into the issue very often, as I live in Stockholm and am busy learning to speak Swedish (which, thankfully, is very close to my native language, Danish, but it's still something you'll have to work at learning, to get it right), so it's mostly on usenet, and the few times I speak to someone English IRL, that the issue might come up and on usenet you have a big diversity of people, though the people in the froups and groups I read tend to be more well educated than average (I hope you don't mind me calling them "froups", as they insist on being called so).

Nikitta a.a. #1759 Apatriot(No, not apricot)#18
ICQ# 251532856
Unreferenced footnotes: http://www.nut.house.cx/cgi-bin/nemwiki.pl?ISFN "I mean, would you* mess with someone wearing a big orange straw hat? Well, *you prolly would, but I prolly wouldn't. Unpredictable, that's the key, keeps people on edge." Carl LHS Williams (sheddie)

Is "different from" legal?

Here's our FAQ entry: "different to", "different than" "Different from" is the construction that no one will object to. ... 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

Does Cobuild have similar figures for "imply"/"infer", "fine toothcomb", "between you and I", etc.? If so, it sounds like a potentially more credible yardstick than Google for gauging (sub)standardness.

Ross Howard