Different than vs. different from

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
22

Curiously, no one has provided a link to the column where Cecil answers nemo: Is “different than” bad grammar?

That out of the way, I must say that I’m disappointed in that column. If you ask Cecil a quetion involving physics, chemistry or biology, you’ll get an answer corresponding to the best knowledge we have of that particular science. What we got in this column was the equivalent of a medieval scholar telling Gallileo that he’s wrong because his physics does not correspond to Aristotle. And then he adds some ham-handed logic in a foolish attempt to support his argument.

When it comes to language, we have a science known as linguistics. Like other sciences, linguistics is based on an objective reality rather than the prejudices of the “authorities”. In other sciences, objective reality is what determines what is right and wrong. And so it is with linguistics. Linguists observe that people use language and other people understand what they say. Anything that corresponds to this is right, other things are wrong.

For example, one of the observations of this science is that some people use the construction different than, while others will use different from or different to and that in each case, other people understand them. Not only that, they understand that they mean exactly the same thing. Therefore, all these constructions are right.

People do not say *different with or *different glop or **different <anything else>*. If they did other people would not understand them. That makes those constructions wrong.

Now one thing that makes linguistics different from/than/to other sciences is that its objective reality is not fixed for all time. An electron will always act the same, whether last year or 100 years in the future. But language changes. At the current time, *different with is wrong, but for all we know, in a couple hundred years, people may start to use that construction and so it would become right.

23

I know an African-American investment banker who lives in west Harlem. He talks to his neighbors in their idiom and uses standard English with clients. Saying “different than” at the office would be like wearing a black suit instead of charcoal gray. His colleagues have read William Strunk.

People in leading professions use standard English for formal situations. Most learned something very close to it at home; a few mastered it as an adopted dialect. Unfortunately the teaching of English grammar is prone to two extremes: one won’t help a child survive in Harlem and the other won’t help an adult survive beyond it. It’s a forceful statement there to call an opinion prejudiced.

Details of usage are loaded with information. We’ve all heard of Freudian slips. Grammar and idiom hint at important things. How educated is this person? How sophisticated is this person? What are this person’s politics? People like my friend the banker don’t participate in debates like this thread’s; they observe them as measurements.

Most ancient Roman grafitti violates Latin grammar.

24

Perhaps to those who have the (mistaken) notion that perjudice = racist. There are other forms of prejudice that have nothing to do with race.

There’s a notion that the One True™ English is the somewhat artificial dialect they were taught in grammar school and that anything that violates the rules handed down by the teacher (or writers of usage books) is substandard or outright wrong. This is a form of prejudice and it was evinced to a limited degree in Cecil’s column and to a great degree by lissener in this thread.

25

That’s a reasonable distinction for adults who seldom confront bigotry.

Schoolchildren in Harlem whose classroom is a converted broom closet with a dripping ceiling may conclude that prejudice against their dialect reveals one aspect of a larger pattern.

You’ve read E.D. Hirsch, I hope? He agrees with your point and goes on to argue that ignoring the existence of standard written usage ultimately harms the same children as much as those old edicts.

When I’ve worked as a writing tutor I’ve stressed the importance of adapting usage to the situation. Spoken dialects are as inappropriate for a formal paper as academic jargon would be wrong at a family picnic.

26

The one point about Cecil’s argument that gets me is that people say “different than” out of the belief “different” is a comparative. But it’s not. At least not in the sense of “red, redder, reddest.” This got me to thinking in terms of different languages. Do other languages also make this “muck-up.”

Polish, for instance, will use an “inny niz” construction, which translates exactly as “different than.” There is also an “inny od,” or “different from” construction in Polish.

German also takes the “than” construction.

To wit:
He is different from his brother.
Er ist anders als sein Bruder

“Als” is the preposition normally used with comparisons in German.

Hungarian also takes the comparative conjunction, as in “mas mint.” “Mint” is the “than” equivalent.

What I mean to show here is we have three languages preseneted: one Slavic, one Germanic and one Finno-Ugric. None of these languages seem to complain that there is a logical flaw with treating “different” as a comparative adjective. All of the aforementioned languages use the conjunction that is normally used with comparatives such as “higher,” “bigger,” and the such. All of the aforementioned languages have a separate word to denote the preposition “from” in the same sense that it is used in English. As the “from” in “separate one from the other.”

I don’t mean to imply that we should follow the grammar of another language to construct ours. We tried that with Latin, and see where it got us? My point is that at my cursory and personal look at foreign languages, there seems to be a common thread of people treating “different” as a comparative adjective.
Even to me, although I tend to use the “different from” construction, “different than” certainly doesn’t feel wrong to me.

I would like to see how other languages treat “different from/to/than” and whether they use a conjunction normally associated with comparitives, or whether they do use the “proper” preposition.

27

Re-reading my post, I realize the first few sentences may be a tad confusing. It should read more like:

Cecil argues that people use the construction “different than” under the mistaken belief that “different” is a comparative. He states that it is not a comparative. There is no “diff, differ, diffest.” This got me to thinking…

28

From Strunk and White’s Elements of Style: (always good, always clear, always brief):

"Different than. Here logic supports established usage: one thing differs from another, hence, different from. Or, other than, unlike.

Next, Disinterested vs. Uninterested. My bete noir.

29

I disagree. “Blick blotz” is a perfectly comprehensible Martian phrase.

30

[[I don’t know anybody at all that actually says “better than they” …]] blahedo

Don’t you mean "I don’t know anybody at all who…?

31

Oh, I don’t know, Jill. Ever hear of “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg?” Or are you taking the position that Mark Twain didn’t know what he was doing?

For the record, if I were in the habit of using smiley faces, I’d use one here. Peace,

nemo

32

bazdennen-

i agree to some extent that logic can support the “different from” construction, but language has a fuzzier logic than math. In most languages, two negatives don’t make a positive. The fact that a double negative is rejected in English is patently absurb and artificial, IMHO.

But that’s off topic.

Logic can also support the other constructions, no?

“Different to” I assume is analyzed by speakers in the same way as “similar to.” If A is SIMILAR TO B, than B is DIFFERENT TO C. It follows the same syntactical construction, and thus is perfectly logical and proper for people who use this form.

“Different than.” My conjecture is that for people who use this construction “different” acts as a pro-comparitive adjective. What I mean is that "different " automatically triggers a mental idea of “X-er” and “Y-er” and “Z-er” of the two things being compared. Yes, “different” is not a comparative adjective in the strict sense. But I do believe it behaves linguistically as a comparative for many speakers. And I think these speakers are well grounded in the logic for analyzing “different” as a comparative, because as we’ve seen at least several languages in the world also make a habit of it.

Using the “different than” construction will not make one appear to another as a “supercilious contrarian of very little brain,” as was so eloquently written by lissener. This is hardly a major grammatical lapse, if it is one at all.

33

Sorry for the double post, but I found a book in my collection that has something to say on the subject.

From Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue:The English Language” :

“Consider the curiously persistent notion that sentences should not end with a preposition. The source of this stricture, and several other equally dubious ones, was on Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introductionto English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad. It is to Lowth we can trace many a pedant’s most treasured notions: the belief that you must say different from rather than different to or different than, the idea that two negatives make a positive…” (Bryson 132.)

“But then this was a period of the most resplendent silliness, when grammarians and scholars seemed to be climbing over one another (or each other; it doesn’t really matter) in a mad scramble to come up with fresh absurdities.” (Bryson 133.)

“Today in England you can still find authorities attacking the construction different than as a regrettable Americanism … Yet different than has been common in England for centuries and used by such exalted writers as Defoe, Addison, Steele, Dickens, Coleridge, and Thackeray, among others.” (Bryson 134.)

And another point, if “different than” is such a bad construction, why is it permitted in an instance such as: “This beer is different than it was before?”
Obviously, since we can’t say “This beer is different from it was before.” But we can say “This beer is different from what it was before.” Why don’t the mavens have us conforming to that? Because it looks and sounds ugly. Now, Cecil goes over this points. He points out the fine distinction between the use of “from” followed by a prepositional phrase and “than” used as a conjunction following a dependent clause.

But, my contention is that “different” IS a type of comparative. It behaves EXACTLY as a comparite would in the above sentences. Substitue words and see.

This beer is sweeter than that beer.
This beer is different than that beer.

This beer is sweeter than it was before.
This beer is different than it was before.

Perfectly logical. Perfectly consistent. I hate to do it, but I disagree with Cece’s logic and conclusion on this point.

34

Right. I was joking too, and also don’t use smiley faces. Except in person.

  • Jill
35

Bazdennen, I admit that it was a grave blunder on my part not to have consulted Stunk and White before making such a sweeping statement as my infamously exaggerated “no …authority…of the past fifty years etc.” Please note, however, that the words you quote from Chapter IV are very likely unchanged since their 1935 origins, well before the fifty-year period I was talking about. I still should have looked it up, because it’s a still a very wise and useful guide, but I didn’t think such a “little” book would find space to bother with such a trival matter. In any event, I did consult a number of other works on the subject, two of which I’ve cited above, and all were in agreement that there was no need for a prohibition on “different than.” I should have realized that anyone, especially someone as good at research as Cecil, can find some respectable writer to defend virtually any opinion about English usage, so I should have toned down my rhetoric. If I’d looked at “The Elements Of Style,” I might have done so. Where were you when I needed you?

By the way, this entire thread seems to me to strengthen my point that this specific point of usage is debatable. The fact that Cecil chose to reply to me, not just here on the message board, but in his weekly print column, strongly suggests that he thinks so too. If it’s debatable, he shouldn’t have used it as ammunition, as though it were established fact, in attacking the writing of someone (Marie G.) who wrote to him in good faith on a matter unrelated to English usage. Q.E., as I see the matter, D. I’m sure someone will swiftly correct me on some flaw in my reasoning, since I haven’t indicated tongue-in-cheek mode with one of those dreadful symbols.

And for anyone who cares, I don’t agree with everything said by all of those who have disagreed with Cecil. For the most part, I think conservatively about English usage, and I enjoy reading the writing of prescriptivist grammarians (why else would I have all these books at my fingertips?). One good conservative rule of thumb, though, is not to try to impose strictures that serve no purpose only because academic logic says the language ought to be this way or that way. Or because something was a sacred cow or an “object of special scorn” (E. B. White) for your junior high school English teacher forty-nine years ago. Or because you’re crochety.

nemo

ps Jill - Thanks for the levity. I wonder why more people aren’t having more fun with this?

36

Whoops! I honestly did not mean to type “Stunk” for “Strunk,” even if I do think he was being a little picky about this. Also, thanks to pulykamell for citing Bill Bryson; I meant to mention earlier that “The Mother Tongue” was another of the books I consulted before writing the original post. Did anyone expect Cecil ever to admit that I had any educated opinion on my side whatsoever? I’ve been numbered among the Teeming Millions for more than twenty years, and I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that one.

37

[[If it’s debatable, he shouldn’t have used it as ammunition, as though it were established fact, in attacking the writing of someone (Marie G.) who wrote to him in good faith on a matter unrelated to English usage.]]

Well, except that it was funny and Marie was being really snippy.

38

It’s not that I don’t get the humor, I just don’t think it’s very funny. If I did, this thread probably wouldn’t exist.

It’s seldom funny when anyone makes fun of someone else’s writing, unless both the attacker and the victim are professional writers. It’s a lazy form of invective, really, since everyone is guilty of grammatical and stylistic solecisms often enough to make their writing too easy a target. But that’s probably a minority opinion among the Teeming Millions, many of whom seem to like it when Cecil does that sort of thing, so I’ll shut up now. Peace,
nemo

39

Well, even thought the discussion is basically over, I just wanted to say that I found the both the original post and the column interesting. My Dad always told me different than was incorrect, and picky grammar was really not his thing.

It’s nice to hear all the different views about it, and the facts too.

Bethany