I first looked at the expression “different to” (where Americans would say “different from” or “different than”) in 2013 and categorized it as a “Doobious NOOB,” so infrequently did it come up in the U.S. Two years later I upgraded it to “On the Radar,” because it showed up in an American publication–but then a commenter pointed out that the writer of the article was from London, and I downgraded it again. (And by the way, I’d advise reading all the comments on those two posts before commenting on this one–they offer a lot of good info and insight on the “from”/”than”/”to” forms.)

“Different to” appeared yesterday in the New York Times in a quote from a definitely American person, but I’m dubious. The person was the singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle, who very sadly died at the age of 38. His obituary included a quote from him in The Scotsman in 2015:

“I always knew there was something different about the way I used drugs and drank to the way my friends did.” (Emphasis added.)

Does the distance from “different” make it more likely that Earle would have used “to” rather than “from” or “than”? I would say not. My hunch is that he didn’t say it, but rather that the Scotsman writer (probably unthinkingly) rendered the quote to sound more natural to his or her ears and readers. And that’s why I’m introducing a new category, “Really?”, for dubious quotes supposedly by Americans in British publications.

And by the way Google Books Ngram Viewer suggests that even in British books, “different from” is much more common than “different to,” even though the latter has steadily increased since about 1960. (And I’m sure would be significantly more common in speech and other informal usage.)

In any case, I’m still waiting to encounter incontrovertible examples of Americans saying or writing “different to.”