I have got:" the
locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me"
for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face
the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a
colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm,
for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the
logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last
letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last
letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a
Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the
same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a
particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of
convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up
by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little
or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are
always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking
him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a
context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word
which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no
difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the
North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say
"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should
say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I
recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do
not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I
would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different
to."

As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on
the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long
list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York
Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to
me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man;
she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The
grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to
the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"
Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not