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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Off topic. Did you intentionally use the word then after the comma in the second sentence in the second paragraph "then the sleazy salesman"?

I see this a lot here on HN where I assume the word should be than. Is this some regional dialect quirk?

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In most American accents, the two words are homophones, so misspelling one as the other in writing is quite common.

Common, but not correct. That said, it's a random comment on hackernews, not quite the OED.

Yes, it is usually the case that misspellings are incorrect. :P

I did say misspelling :-P

'different then' is one of the clues in online written communication that the writer speaks American English (with some confusion), 'different than' is 'correct' american english (though seems odd to me as an english english [or just simply: english] speaker), 'different to' is, I believe, more common in english english but not american english, and 'different from' is probably the most correct and universal formulation, and I use the word 'correct' with all the usual caveats when applied to language.

"Different than" and "different from" both appear to be accepted in American English, with "different from" having an edge for more formal writing. [1] [2]

[1] http://www.dictionary.com/e/different-from-or-different-than...

[2] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/different-from-than-...

Oh, is that why we see the than/then typo so often? I never understood how you could mix the two up.

Yes they're pronounced exactly the same in the Midwest.

I know a lot of Americans from all over the place and have never met one who pronounces those two words the same.

At least not in the same way "pen" and "pin" are homophones in parts of the country. Nor how they're / their / there is for everyone.

"than" is usually unstressed, which means it's going to be largely reduced to a schwa. "then" would also be reduced to a schwa if it were unstressed, but it doesn't seem to be as frequently unstressed. When trying to transcribe the spoken thought to written text, the unstressed schwa is a lot closer to the 'e' in then than the 'a' in than, which probably explains the predilection for choosing "then" when "than" is meant.

(I know I have a major tendency to write "then" when "than" is meant).

I would never have said they were homonyms. That said, they're probably closer for people speaking with a bit of a Southern drawl than they would be with standard American pronunciation.

I'm born and raised in Los Angeles, and it's a homophone for me; you can add me as a data point to your pool.

No, people are just lazy. It's not like people don't mix up the two in other regions.

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