Destruction of the English language

Even The Daily Mirror picked up on that as their headline says

Meghan Markle tells Oprah life in Royal family is very ‘different to what people imagine’

then in the article she is quoted as you have written.

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I have noticed that most, if not all, Americans say ‘different than’. It grates every time I hear it.

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I don’t like ‘different to’, either. I know that it is accepted, but it sets up an opposition in my mind - ‘differ’ (and ‘different’) indicates a parting of the ways, if you will - one is separated from the other, so for me ‘different from’ makes sense.

You and my wife would get on well together…

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Either is ok with me, depending on the context. But never ‘different than’!

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The real question is, do others understand what you are writing, or saying.

Different to, different from, different than.

I bet most people will have no difficulty whatsoever.

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My reaction to much of how Americans speak if I compare to English - but it is American, not true English, and their language parted company from ours a ling time ago, so in practice that doesn’t annoy me any more than, say, “gotten”, or even: “my bad”, *when spoken by an American. But I do find these irritating when spoken by a British person.

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I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and am feeling in a liverish and complaining mood .
Unless my ears have deceived me I have just heard someone on R3 say " disrespected ".
What a dreadful word .
The Barbarians are definitely at the gate .

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Absolutely, surely everyone knows the correct format is ‘dissed’ :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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That horrific 17th century verb according to my old OED.

(My OED is the Compact edition, the full OED photo reduced to have 9 pages from the main edition per physical page, which is why you can see the paper texture in this photo.)

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I know that there are many forum for whom English is an additional or optional language. The only thing that gets me shouting at my screen is when bass becomes base. Two very different words.
“The base was unaffected by the recent update,” has a very different meaning to, “the bass was unaffected by the recent update.”

True, but …
… as you say, and as true Brits, we know exactly what non-native speakers mean. We accept these trivial mistakes and focus on the message.

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Indeed. I wish that I could speak a foreign language as well as others whose first language is not English speak English.

Thank you for your helpful information …notwithstanding the 17th century origins I still do not like the word .

Disrespect as a word I find okay.
It’s new woke words like ‘dissed’ ’ dissing’ or ‘disresepected him/me/her/them/&c’ that get on my wick.

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Interesting thread.

Advertising or marketing copy with spelling or grammatical errors is what really gets on my nerves. It costs a lot of money to print hoardings and signs.

Yesterday I saw an expensive billboard saying:

Everyday we strive to delight our customers.

Which has much to get worked up about, but ‘everyday’. Really.

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You may well dislike ‘diss’ but it has absolutely nothing to do with being ‘woke’. ‘Diss’ has been around from the early 1980’s starting as African- American slang so predates the whole concept of being woke by about three decades. ‘Woke’ isn’t a catch all concept for all the things you may not like

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Woke to me sounds like a compliment in any case.

It should be complimentary and positive but is a much despised concept for many.