@Skeeter Lewis - Fowler disliked a lot of things which are now common, and liked a lot of things which have fallen by the wayside. He's a very strange mixture of prescriptivist and anti-pedant, seemingly on the basis of what sounded idiomatic to him. As linguist David Crystal says in the introduction to the republished original first edition:

"It is this unpredictability of opinion which makes it difficult to generalize about Fowler"

Which is why both traditionalists and modernists can find something to like in Fowler, as well as things to dislike.

I agree that the original move towards pronouncing the T, pre-Fowler, may have been to do with spelling, (this movement seems to have been strongest in the nineteenth century, probably due to the rise in literacy) but I thought we were discussing its more recent rise in popularity, which I think may have more to do with other factors, which I've already mentioned.

In particular, it doesn't account for those of us who possibly use both. And if it's OK for the pronunciation to change from /ɔ:/ (as in awful) to /ɒ/ (as in clock), what's the problem with sounding the T? The OED quote is from 1904. And seeing we've quoted from the first two editions of Fowler, here's something for the third (1996), edited by RW Burchfield -

"Nowadays many standard speakers use both /ˈɒfən/ and /ˈɒftən/, but the former pronunciation is the more common of the two"

Oxford Online lists both these pronunciations without comment.

One commenter at Stack.Exchange said - "From a UK perspective, I must admit I've never encountered anyone with an opinion about one pronunciation being more "acceptable" than the other. I think they're just ideolectal variants"

It is certainly of interest to those who like to investigate how language changes, but that's all. There's nothing incorrect about pronouncing the T. After all, that's how it was originally pronounced, before the silent T movement got their hands on it.

@Therese - for example?

@judith and Brittany - The current Sundance Film Festival in Utah advertises itself as running Jan 16-26 2014

I've now put together a post with examples of 'different to' from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, with links to Google Books. And also some early comments on its use:

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2014/01/different-to-revisited.html

@Jasper - He says - 'This is because “first” is one of the relatively few adjectives which do not change their form when they become adverbs, unlike "second" and "third". The first bit is OK: "first" is the usual adverb from the ordinal number "first" (although a second adverb "firstly", only used in lists, has existed for about five hundred years). But then he seems to be suggesting that there are no adverbs "second", "third" etc. - thus justifying the use of -ly words for secondly etc. But of course that's nonsense. -'David came first and Peter came second'. Here both 'first' and 'second' are adverbs.

Nearly all authorities nowadays consider all three possibilities grammatically correct; the choice is one off style, that's all. For example the American Heritage Dictionary, not the most radical of dictionaries says:

'Usage Note: It is well established that either first or firstly can be used to begin an enumeration: Our objectives are, first (or firstly), to recover from last year's slump. Any succeeding items should be introduced by words parallel to the form that is chosen, as in first . . . second . . . third or firstly . . . secondly . . . thirdly.'

But this is a style issue, not a grammatical one. I have no problem with people saying 'first, secondly, thirdly', if they want, but I do when they say my choice, usually 'firstly, secondly, thirdly' (which I think is rather more common in British English) is wrong.

@HS - I realise that, and was trying to be a bit tongue in cheek, even provocative in return. Sorry if you took offence, but if you will make rude remarks (however tongue in cheek) about my favourite usage book (that's usage as in how language is used, not as it should be used) you shouldn't be too surprised if I make a riposte. :)

@Jasper - this is from my blog:

"Gwynne's test has twelve questions. Six questions, half the quiz, involve identifying the part of speech and the function of two words, near and nowhere, in six different contexts - nothing controversial here, but quite technical and rather a large proportion of the quiz, I would have thought. One was about Latin, not English; one (about the use of a defining relative clause) was OK but a bit silly; and one was unremarkable. Which left three controversial ones:

Which is correct?
a. Do you see who I see?
b. Do you see whom I see?

Which is correct?
a. He had fewer men than in the previous campaign
b. He had less men than in the previous campaign

Which of these lists is more traditionally correct and technically perfect?
a. Firstly…, secondly…, thirdly…
b. First ..., secondly, ... thirdly

And of course the 'correct' answers were b, a and b. Now nobody I know would say 'Do you see whom I see', but that doesn't seem to bother Mr B. I know that on occasion in informal English I say 'less people, as do many other educated speakers, but Mr G doesn't seem to allow for different registers either. I know that in the last one many people prefer b, but it has nothing to do with 'technical perfection', but with style preferences and convention. It's one thing that Mr G didn't seem to recognise 'firstly' as an adverb, which it has been for about five hundred years, even if not used much, but he doesn't seem to realise that second can be an adverb, (She came second in the race) and thus that en even more perfect solution (if people are so worried about extra syllables) might simply be 'First ..., second..., third', (the preferred solution in many modern style guides), an option he didn't give us.

I'm currently working on a blog post on 'first(ly), second(ly) etc. Meanwhile here's my take on 'Mr Gwynne, sex and gender':

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2014/01/random-thoughts-on-mr-gwynne-sex-and.html

Three and a bit years too late, but I've just noticed this from HS - "In common with the majority of the English speaking world I do not consider Merriam-Webster a definitive, nor even proper, source of information on the language."

I would be flabbergasted if even one percent of the English-speaking world outside the US had even heard of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (which is not the same as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary). And I can only assume HS has some sort of telepathic powers that he has such privileged information about the opinions of his language fellows - I certainly don't remember being consulted. But I suspect that anything which included the name Webster would fall foul of his approval.

I have to say that the MWDEU is one of the best book purchases have ever made, and the reason I bought it is precisely because I didn't want a 'definitive' book that tells me what I should say, but that one that tells me in a non-moralising way how certain expressions have been used by canonical writers in the past, how they are used by educated speakers and writers today, and how they have been commented on over the centuries - how that's somehow not 'proper' eludes me. And they often do it in a humorous way (as with the home/hone in entry).

I think the reason people like me like it is because it gives us the information we need to make our own choices rather than laying down the law. In the UK there are people enough like Neville Gwynne (Gwynne's Grammar) and Simon Heffer (Strictly English) who do that. In contrast to them, MWDEU is a breath of fresh air.

In the US, both Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries accept both pronunciations, as do both Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries in the UK (but not Macmillans), although not everybody accepts that. According to Wikipedia ' the pronunciation without /t/ is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers'.

It is certainly thought that the rise of literacy in the nineteenth centuries led more people to pronounce the T, but I thought the whole idea was that young people couldn't spell nowadays! :) I would be interested on what basis Skeeter bases his rather sweeping statement.

In Britain, another possibility is the weakening of the influence of RP, with other accents (perhaps where the T is pronounced - but I have no hard facts) having more influence on a changing Standard English. For example I pronounce 'ate' as /et/ (short e), which I think used to be standard in British RP, but increasingly it's pronounced /eɪt/ - like hate, even by RP speakers. These things happen, and have been happening for centuries: back in the fifteenth century the T in often was always pronounced. After all, back in Victorian times, the H in words like hotel, historic and hospital was not pronounced. Is our pronunciation of them also 'a fallacious idea"? 'The British Library, which is conducting research into these sort of changes put it down largely to fashion.

I've also seen suggestions the same person might well use both, often unawares. I usually say it without the T, but I can't guarantee that's always the case. One EFL teacher writes: 'Strangely, I get asked about this in class quite a lot, because sometimes I pronounce often both ways.' Linguist Ben Zimmer, who succeded William Safire at the 'On Language' column at the New York Times, was sure he used the T-less version, but was heard pronouncing the T in a radio interview. I imagine quite a few of us do the same.

There's a good article on the subject by Jan Freeman, of the Boston Globe, at her excellent blog:

http://throwgrammarfromthetrain.blogspot.com/2010/07/often-with-t.html

@HS - this might interest you, from the Oxford Dictionaries blog - although I don't quite understand their figures. It looks as though it's currently stronger than I thought.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/01/different-from-than-to/

No, Google doesn't have the originals; they are all in university libraries where they are photographed and digitised by Google from the originals. There are actually two versions at Google Books, the photographic one which we see, and a digital one in the background for search, etc, and programs like Ngram. I don't really know how much more original I can get than that, but next time I'm in Munich I'll check with the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek where the original is. I've been there before, when researching the Weimar republic, and they're very helpful.

Yes, there has been an absolute rise since the sixties, but the rise in 'different from' is even greater. I'm not really saying it hasn't got more popular recently, just that it is nothing new. This is from an American in 1857:

"I was not aware at the time of the general use made of this expression by English writers as well as speakers. But I've since observed it to be very common - even universal"

As far back as 1770, a certain Robert Blake, while decrying the use of 'different to', admitted that it is an expression often used by good writers' in England:

http://books.google.pl/books?id=RQISAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA7&dq=%22different+to%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4hDcUt_dB6aA7QbJrIDoCA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22different%20to%22&f=false

I'm collecting examples for a blog post, for example these from Jane Eyre:

http://books.google.pl/books?id=lSMGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=jane+eyre+by+charlotte+bronte&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WkDcUpqGN9CGhQfky4GIAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22different%20to%22&f=false

Sorry, but I don't get the CRAFT reference. :))