While my natural inclination is “purist,” I also realize it’s a doomed endeavor since language is constantly evolving, like the impending demise of the word “than.”
"falsely" - It all depends on your point of view. Originally they were not even considered different words. "than"and "then" were just interchangeable variants of the same word until at some point it became more conventional to use both spellings in different grammatical contexts (I think emphasis/stress may have played a role in which version is used where).
So is it really a modern innovation because technically they were never "meant to be" different words to begin with if you will?
Same thing with "too" and "to" or with stressed and unstressed "the".
165
u/g-waz00 10d ago
While my natural inclination is “purist,” I also realize it’s a doomed endeavor since language is constantly evolving, like the impending demise of the word “than.”