#different to

Is this a regional variance?

I'm from the Midwest (Ohio, United States), and for the vast majority of my life, I always only heard or read people saying something is "different FROM" something else.

But the past couple years, I've begun noticing more and more people saying "this is different to that". At first I thought it was poor grammar. It's like when people say "all the sudden"; it's supposed to be "all OF A Sudden". Prepositions are Hard. I'd understand if people are mixing up "to" and "from"; they're opposites, but because they're opposites (and both generally directional prepositions), our brains tend to lump them into the same category. Words in the same category get easily mixed up in a lot of languages.

But then I saw it again. And again, and again, and again. Maybe it's a mispronunciation grown popular?

But I realized in the past couple of weeks, it might be a regional thing too! I'm beginning to suspect it might be a "UK English vs. US English" thing just based on other English quirks I've picked up in the same posts that say "different to", but I'm not sure on that. To my knowledge, it seems like a very recent trend, because I swear to you, I had NEVER seen someone saying "different to" until very recently!

But that could just as easily be because I simply didn't notice.

So is this a regional thing? Has anyone else looked into this? How do you even research a preposition when even BEFORE the enshittification of Google Search, search engines would often straight-up IGNORE prepositions?

Word Confusion:    Different From vs    Different Than vs    Different To

This Word Confusion is a tricky bugger. The different to is pretty simple, and being a British preference, it’s not a confusion American authors are likely to run into. Unless, of course, one of our characters is English. Mmmm, nothing like complicating things up *grin*.

Different from and different thanare MUCH more difficult. I spend more time exploring, tasting, trying out different…

Word Confusion: Different From vs Different Than vs Different To

by Kathy Davie

This Word Confusion is a tricky bugger. The different to is pretty simple, and being a British preference, it’s not a confusion American authors are likely to run into. Unless, of course, one of our characters is English. Mmmm, nothing like complicating things up *grin*.

Different from and different thanare MUCH more difficult. I spend more time exploring, tasting, trying out…