Is usage of "near to" wrong?
Is usage of near to wrong? For example, which is correct?
This place is near to London.
This place is near London.
Both are found. There are examples of near to + place name in both the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the 'Oxford English Dictionary' has four illustrative citations, including two which have near to London.
Near to is usually not used before the name of a place, person or festival, but there are examples of its usage in other contexts.