derefr
tomsmeding
It's even better. The "X-te" (Xて) is technically not X in present tense, it is specifically X in the te-form (て is read "te").
The te-form has a bunch of different uses, but in the case of "verb-te verb", if the second verb is not one of a list of special verbs (of which miru (見る, to see) is one), X-te Y normally means "X and Y". For example, yorugohan o tsukutte taberu (夜ご飯を作って食べる) means "(to/I/we/you/...) make dinner and eat it": yorugohan is dinner, the "o" is a particle marking the direct object, tsukuru means to make (becomes tsukutte in the te-form) and taberu means to eat. (The first word in English is ambiguous because grammatical subjects are usually optional in Japanese, plus its verbs are not inflected for person or number.)
For a number of verbs, however, if they are in the second position, the phrase gets a special meaning. If it's miru, e.g. tsukutte miru, it means "to try to make" — or perhaps more aptly, "to try and make". If it's iku (行く, to go), it means "to go X-ing": tabete iku (where taberu (to eat) -> tabete in the te-form) is "to go to eat [something]", or perhaps: "to go and eat [something]".
Not all such special verbs correspond to English pseudocoordination though; a common one is shimau (the dictionary says "to finish / to stop", but it's uncommon in bare form), where e.g. tabete shimau means "to finish eating" or "to end up eating" / "to eat accidentally" depending on context.
The analogy between English and Japanese here is likely coincidental, but it's amusing nevertheless.
haunter
Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative languages do share this element
musicale
This is a nice explanation; I wish that duolingo hadn't removed their user comment/explanation section, which used to contain similar (though not always correct, which is probably part of why they removed them.)
trealira
Funnily enough, this has resulted in people saying things like "見てみましょう" and "見てみてください", which confused me at first. But I suppose this is like non-native English speakers being confused by the extra "do" in phrases like "I already did do my work."
raldi
I think most of the mysteries in this piece can be explained if “try and stop me” just an abbreviation for “try to stop me and see if you can”.
bendigedig
I think "Try and X" means "Try to X and do X" which means to my mind means to attempt and, upon success of the trial, to complete X.
"I’ll try and eat the salad." could be expressed as "I'll try eating some of the salad and, if possible, finish eating it."
null
onionisafruit
You can also interpret the Dr Dre quote an abbreviation of, “I’m gonna try (to change the course of hip hop again) and change the course of hip hop again.”
In this form “try and” means you will try to do something and that you will succeed. Some of the articles tests make more sense in this light; Of course you wouldn’t reorder the trying and the succeeding because that’s the order the events will happen.
This ignores the fact that “try and” developed concurrently with “try to” and possibly before. So it wasn’t originally an abbreviation for a phrase that was yet to be established.
jjmarr
"I have tried and finished my homework" is correct to my ear (possibly because I'm Canadian), but it means successful completion as opposed to "I have tried to finish my homework" implying I didn't get around to it.
hyperpape
That's not what "try and" means though. It's perfectly fine to say "I'm gonna try and fix this" when you don't know if you can fix it.
(Source: I say that shit all the time).
foolswisdom
This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.
WaxProlix
This is a good intuition. The construction is actually sometimes jokingly called the "Try And"-C, where "C" stands for Complementizer, a thing that introduces and subordinates a clause.
samiskin
I think this capture’s the essence better than anything else, “try and” simply behaving as “try and see if I can” (or whatever fits instead of “I” here)
null
foldr
I don’t think that’s anything like the meaning of “I’ll try and go to the store tomorrow”. There’s no implication that anyone is trying to stop me.
Also, your abbreviation analysis would still leave a syntactic mystery, as that sort of ellipsis doesn’t seem to follow any general attested pattern of ellipsis in English.
OJFord
That example would be something like 'I'll try to go to the store tomorrow and see if I can' along the lines GP suggests. 'stop me' only came from the specific example they were using.
foldr
You can actually construct this using regular VP ellipsis (or possibly Right Node Raising?) in English, but it sounds weird and doesn’t convey the same meaning. So I don’t think so.
“I’ll try to ___ and see if I can go to the store tomorrow”. [where ___ is the VP ‘go to the store’]
Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. This isn’t possible in an analogous ellipsis construction:
“What did you try and eat?”
* ”What did you try to and see if you can eat?”
There’s also an interesting tense restriction which suggests that there’s no independent elided clause:
*”I tried and go/went to the store yesterday.”
everybodyknows
> I don’t think that’s anything like the meaning of
Parent post said "most"; you've identified an exception.
foldr
If you check the parent comment, the 'most' applied to the fraction of mysteries, not the the fraction of instances of the construction that the analysis is supposed to apply to. But anyway, this isn't an exception. The overwhelming generalization is that "try and do X" means the same as "try to do X". This holds for imperatives like the OP's example just as much as for my examples. There's very little difference between the to/and variants of any of the following:
Try and/to do it quietly
Try and/to be a little more polite.
Try and/to hand your homework in on time.
I agree that in some specific cases there are slightly different shades of meaning. However, this doesn't seem to be a very systematic phenomenon, or one that obviously justifies the assumption that "try and" is an elliptical expression of a complex multi-clausal construction.
echelon
I also like how several linguists attempt to call out this usage as wrong:
> deemed prescriptively incorrect (Routledge 1864:579 in D. Ross 2013a:120; Partridge 1947:338, Crews et al. 1989:656 in Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:320).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
You can't really reign in language.
tigen
*rein in
Some things like this are nevertheless generally known to be wrong despite usage
umanwizard
Linguists don’t say varieties are right or wrong (even though they might have private aesthetic opinions like everyone else). That would be like a biologist saying dogs are the correct version of mammals and cats are wrong and/or don’t exist.
menage
Biologists actually say the opposite of that!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-are-perfect-...
DonHopkins
And this is why I cringe whenever somebody tries to defend Perl's syntax by perlsplaining "But Larry Wall is a linguist!"
unscaled
These are not linguists doing that. No self-respecting linguists will waste time doing prescriptivism. These are two linguistic articles about this constructs that are quoting amateur language usage manuals. The oldest one is a boys magazine[1] published in 1864 discussing "the Queen's English"[2]. The newest one (Crews et al.) seems to be an obscure usage manual for writers[3].
As demonstrated here, "try and" is older and more "original" than "try to", if not contemporary with it. Any other reason why would "try to" be more "correct" cannot even make sense as anything more than a purely uneducated opinion. When you dig deep into most examples of perspectivism you'll usually run into the same story too. "Incorrect" forms often predate the "correct" forms and are often employed by respected writers (such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen). And even if they don't, there isn't really any scientific ground to brand one form as incorrect.
Linguists do not generally engage in linguist prescriptivism. As far as I'm concerned (and I believe most linguists would agree), this is stylistic opinion at best and pseudoscience at worst. Still, it's not linguists can do anything to stop amateurs from publishing prescriptive language usage manuals, so you'll always have people who claim that "try and" or "ain't" or "me and my friend went for a walk" are incorrect.
[1] https://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.php?j...
[2] Yes, this is Edmund Routledge whose father is the namesake of the present scholarly publisher, but they were just publishing popular books back in the 19th century.
[3] https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Frederick-Crews/dp/0070136386
orwin
If a modern linguist call any usage as wrong, I would ask for his diploma and check if I have to close his university, because clearly they shouldn't teach linguistics 101, let alone bring someone towards a PhD. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
foldr
The people they’re citing are either authors of usage guides or linguists who are simply noting that the usage has been deemed incorrect by some of the former.
Sardtok
It's kind of funny that in Norwegian, people mix up the infinitive "to" and "and", as they are pronounced the same, "o" in IPA. So we have the same thing in Norwegian writing, but if you happen to use "and", you must use the imperative form of the verb for it to be grammatically correct. So, "try to stop me" is "prøv å stoppe meg", and "try and stop me" is "prøv og stopp meg". The latter is much more colloquial.
This isn't a problem in Swedish and Danish, as their infinitive marker is "att/at", which in Norwegian only means "that" in its conjunctive form.
I wonder if there's any relation to the Norwegian here.
touzen
Actually, the situation is even weirder in Swedish! Even though we write "att", it is pronounced "o" when used to mark an infinitive but not when used like the word "that" in English. So, in the sentence
Jag tror *att* han gillar *att* äta
I think *that* he likes *to* eat
null
triyambakam
Professor Faarlund might agree
> In his 2014 paper "English: The Language of the Vikings" (co-authored by Joseph Embley Emonds), Faarlund and Emonds assert that English is a Scandinavian language (or North Germanic language) which was influenced by Anglo-Saxon (a West Germanic language) [1]
actionfromafar
And in that case, "try and" is potentially very old and very "correct" English.
triyambakam
I don't disagree but I don't follow what you mean in response to Faarlund's theory?
Arn_Thor
First thing I thought of when reading the linked post! You explained it for a non-Norwegian audience better than I could have too!
bsoles
As a nonnative speaker of English who lived more than 30 years in an English speaking country, "try and" sounds to me as bad as "should of". Right or wrong, I perceive it as something an "uneducated" person would say. That said, I firmly believe that correct language is whatever people deem to be appropriate for their communication.
robocat
> sounds to me as bad as "should of"
Interesting that you've used the spelling mistake which is perhaps why you hate it?
If you heard "should've" or "should have" then perhaps it wouldn't annoy you so much??? Also listen for would've / could've
But listening to https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/should_of_would_of_c... made me wonder if people do clearly pronounce the "of" in "should of"... Now I'm worried that I'm going to hear the mistake and be annoyed.
There is nothing more annoying than being told something annoying, and then learning to be annoyed by it.
Try not to internalise that dictum or it will recursively annoy you.
Next time you hear a really annoying vague repetitive/intermittent sound at work, mention it to a coworker if you wish to ruin their worklife.
(Minor edits). I often hear people who have learned English make a particular class of mistake (usually pronunciation) that is a result of being taught English by reading from books. Modern schooling for languages causes certain types of mistakes. There is a natural mimicking art/skill to learning a language by ear. Unfortunately the art isn't taught and is hardly even recognized: perhaps because it works best with intense one-on-one interaction and intent. Book learning was the default that our society used, and some well-educated people prefer books. When learning spoken English it is important to try and ignore spelling. Natural English speakers learn the spelling after learning the language and are in an environment where we have tricks to learn pronunciation of unfamiliar words. There is a strong classist/academic ridiculing of people that make the mistake of pronouncing a word as it is spelled (knowing how words are "properly" pronounced is an important distinction to many people - as is received wordplay).
eaglelizard
Do you mean "should've"? That's a common contraction of "should" and "have." In many American accents, the difference between "should've" and "should have" is negligible, and will sound like "should of" even though it isn't.
It also depends on the audience and medium, with "should've" being more appropriate for conversational/informal usage. It would be perfectly normal to say something like "he shouldn't've done that," but if I were writing a message, I'd at least expand the last contraction to "have."
I think there's a general perception that many of the common dialects of American English, especially in the South and West, are associated with being less educated. I am not sure where that comes from.
I'm a native English speaker, and my perception is that when someone speaks in a way where they don't use contractions, it seems verbose and stilted; I associate it with being scolded or disciplined, or when someone is speaking sternly to make a point (or out of anger). E.g.: "You don't know where you're going, you should've taken a left" - informative/neutral "You do not know where you are going, you should have taken a left" - critical/scolding
Omitting contractions can result in speech that sounds strange and unnatural in general: "Shouldn't we go?" -> "Should not we go?" "Aren't you coming?" -> "Are not you coming?" "We didn't, but we should've." -> "We did not, but we should have."
bendigedig
> Do you mean "should've"? That's a common contraction of "should" and "have." In many American accents, the difference between "should've" and "should have" is negligible, and will sound like "should of" even though it isn't.
I think they specifically meant "should of" which is a colloquial form of "should've" in a number of places in the UK.
I went to school with a large number of people who would write "I should of done X instead of Y". In fact I'm pretty sure I made that "mistake" a number of times growing up.
bsoles
I meant "should of", especially in writing. I am not sure if "should've" is supposed to sound the same as "should of", but seeing the latter in writing annoys me a lot for some reason.
segmondy
They are not even remotely the same. "should of" is a phonetic issue. of is spoken with the schwa vowel uh, so the o sounds like uh, and the f takes the v sound, so "should of" sounds like "should uhv", and "should have/should 've" sounds exactly the same, "should uhv". The issue is that folks that don't read much hear "should uhv" and think it's should of, so when they write "should of" because they expect should 've to sound like "should have" even tho they completely use the contraction when they speak!
It's like saying that people with accents come across as uneducated when it come just be that the person has a deafness to American th and hears t does a substitute so they will say ting instead of thing or tin in place of thin. With that said, I grew up speaking/hearing the form of British english and "Try and" sounds perfectly fine to me.
smelendez
> regular coordination permits the order of conjuncts to be changed, while in (7) we see that the same is not possible with try and (De Vos 2005:59).
But sometimes conjunction implies sequential order or causation, right? Which seems related here. “I’m going to take a shower and get this dirt off me” or “I’m going to get some flour and bake a cake.” You can’t change the order. It doesn’t make sense to add both in those cases, either.
It’s also interesting about motion verbs, because I see “he came and picked me up at the station” as an example of two literal sequential actions, versus “he went and picked me up at the station” as more about emphasis, like he did something notable. Which could be good or bad: “he went and got himself arrested again.”
brianpan
The emphasis is a really interesting point and overlooked by the article. Your "went and" examples do seem very analogous to "try and". "He went and got himself arrested again," is less about the going and almost exclusively emphasizing the other half of the conjunction.
"Try and" can operate the same way by de-emphasizing the trying. If Dr. Dre said "I'm gonna try to change the course of hip hop again," the sentence is about attempting to do something. On the other hand, "try and" makes the sentence more assured- Dr Dre is going try it and then do it.
I wonder if this half about ordering, half about emphasizing is the reason for the special rules of usage.
urquhartfe
> You can’t change the order.
You are confusing semantics with grammatical correctness. In both your examples, they would still be grammatically correct with reversed order.
(I would actually suggest they are still semantically reasonable too, but that's besides the point).
trimethylpurine
>I’m going to get some flour and bake a cake.
A group works together. One offers to get flour, another offers to bake the cake.
A third could offer, "I'm going to both get some flour and bake a cake."
It would make sense to use "both."
jp0001
Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that your intended audience understands it, eventually.
gwd
> I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something
Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you can't say this:
> * John will both try and kill mosquitos.
or
> * I tried and finished the assignment
or
> * Try always and tell the truth
What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar".
Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm generally against making fun of people for deviating from the prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
umanwizard
Nobody has ever used “literally” to mean “figuratively”. That’s a common misconception and/or a strawman from people who want to stick to the original meaning of “literally”.
If that were the meaning, you would be able to say things like “I stubbed my toe and it hurts so bad I’m figuratively dying”, mirroring the colloquial meaning of “literally”. But nobody says this.
The actual new and non-traditional meaning of “literally” is as a generic intensifier, see e.g. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally
Oh, and by the way, the “traditional” meaning isn’t even the first one. According to my OED second edition, “literal” meaning “Of a translation, version, transcript, etc.: Representing the very words of the original; verbally exact.” is only attested since 1599.
The actual original meaning of “literal”: “of or pertaining to letters of the alphabet; of the nature of letters, alphabetical” is attested since 1475.
card_zero
But your link gives two senses, and it's the second one that applies here: "Used as an intensifier with statements or terms that are in fact meant figuratively and not word for word as stated". And Wiktionary offers the synonyms virtually and so to speak.
"it hurts so bad I’m intensely dying" would be wrong too. It's more than an intensifier, it also means "figuratively".
gwd
> The actual new and non-traditional meaning of “literally” is as a generic intensifier
"Literally" is used as an intensifier in two situations:
1. When speaking neither figuratively nor hyperbolically -- i.e., when the thing you're saying is... er, literally true. (e.g., "The beach is literally a five-minute walk from my house"; "You literally fold the cravat like this")
2. When speaking either figuratively or hyperbolically (e.g., "My head literally exploded"; "The island was literally catapulted into the 21st century")
I have no problem with the first; I do it myself. It's the second I object to.
Why? The hint is in #1 -- right now, literally is the only word we have to say that this actually really happened, that what's being said is neither figurative nor hyperbolic.
That is, the first is not a generic intensifier. It intensifies it because it's actually true.
Loads of other words that used to perform the same function have become meaningless intensifiers: "really" (from "real"), "very" (from "verily" -> "in truth"), "truly".
I think language should be practical. Double negatives are perfectly understandable and feel to me more poetic (if less logically expressive). Using "they" for a single person of unspecified gender is a practical and long-standing solution to a real problem. "Megabyte" is a lot easier to say than "mebibyte".
And, we need a word to mean "I'm not speaking figuratively or hyperbolically"; we don't need Yet Another Meaningless Intensifier. We have "literally", let's keep it.
antonvs
> The actual original meaning of “literal”: “of or pertaining to letters of the alphabet; of the nature of letters, alphabetical” is attested since 1475.
That meaning comes from the Latin "littera"/"litera", meaning letter or character. Words like "transliteration" are based on this root meaning (https://www.etymonline.com/word/transliteration)
Here's the page for "literal": https://www.etymonline.com/word/literal
phkahler
>> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
Can we have also declare war on using "exponentially" in place of "significantly"?
Quekid5
Interesting use of "declare war" there... :)
I understand the feeling, but language is what language does. It will change and you will notice those changes if you're alive long enough :)
Even prescriptivist languages (as my own native language tends to be) cannot escape. I'm bad at my own native language because I've been living elsewhere for very long... but not as bad as the Kids These Days :)
strken
> If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct.
In their dialect, sure. In any given dialect, who knows?
Any speaker of a dialect that isn't West Coast American has likely watched actors who live in Los Angeles try, and fail, to speak their dialect.
umanwizard
Of course. Just like what I’m writing now isn’t grammatically correct Spanish or Chinese.
LudwigNagasena
> If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct.
What if two non-native speakers say something and understand each other?
layer8
That’s a pidgin.
ricardobeat
Then they’re having a useful, but not grammatically correct, conversation.
cgriswald
Although it is a little odd and I'm not certain I've seen it in writing, I have definitely heard constructions like "John will both try and kill mosquitos." to mean, "John will both attempt to and succeed in kill[ing] mosquitos."
"John will both try and like sushi" makes perfect sense, although there's an implied "to eat" verb separate from the "to like" verb in there that isn't present in the constructions the article is talking about.
Likewise, "I tried and finished the assignment," means "I tried (to do) the assignment and I finished it." Again, maybe not in writing, but with a certain inflection on 'tried' (where in writing maybe you'd put a comma or semi-colon to indicate a pause) this is something people actually say; although they may emphasis it with "I finally tried and actually finished the assignment." (Whereas maybe previously they weren't confident they could even do it and maybe didn't try.)
Included for no real reason: "They tried and failed, all of them?" "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."
amenhotep
These are all just different constructions that are related to "try and" only by coincidence. The fact that a different construction looks similar to a grammatically incoherent one by coincidence doesn't make the incoherent one coherent.
leeoniya
> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
MengerSponge
A real flammable/inflammable moment
bryanrasmussen
>Try always and tell the truth
I think the article is incorrect on this though, try always and tell the truth is a perfectly fine albeit slightly anachronistic usage that would mean
Whatever you do you must always try (that is to say not give up), and tell the truth.
One might also assume that you should tell the truth about trying always is the meaning, but at any rate it is not a phrasing that would be out of order a few hundred years ago.
losvedir
That's not the point. While it's a valid sentence, as you point out, it means something different from "try and always tell the truth".
In contrast "try to always tell the truth" and "try always to tell the truth" are both valid and mean the same thing.
ecocentrik
Dr Dre is a professional poet and a very successful one by any standard. His whole stock-in-trade was American urban colloquialisms most of which can be traced back to English rural and working class and predate the colonization of the Americas. The early development of English "prestige grammar" and word usage dates back to the court of William the Conqueror and the reintroduction of romance linguistic influence on Anglo-Saxon English that lead to the development of Middle English by the 13th Century. What you understand as English "prestige grammar" today is a moving target, consistently evolving but still full of contradictions and single-case rules. Many popular European languages today have been modified to exclude these linguistic anomalies, making them more consistent, less error prone and easier to learn. I expect the same thing will be done to the English language over the next century.
antonvs
*stock-in-trade: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stock-in-trade
Sorry, in this thread, I had to!
> I expect the same thing will be done to the English language over the next century.
This has already been happening in English, for centuries. Compare these examples given in the article to modern English:
> 3) ...howe and by what certaine and generall rule I mighte trye and throughly discerne the veritie of the catholike faithe, from the falsehood of wicked heresye... (1554) > 4) You maie (saide I) trie and bring him in, and shewe him to her. (1569)
I suppose after more than 450 years, one might expect even more simplification, but it is perhaps the fate of a lingua franca to have more "backward compatibility" than less widely-used languages.
bjackman
Yep "correctness" only exists contextually. A language teacher can say "no that's wrong" with the implied meaning of "that doesnt follow the patterns of the dialect I'm teaching you". Ditto for newspaper editors and their house style.
But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement.
In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and somewhat toxic.
(Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".)
Swizec
> Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".
Many of those languages have mutually unintelligible dialects. The reference implementation exists to patch communication when you run into trouble with people who aren’t from your village.
Even American English has this. People from Appalachia register switch to more standard English when they’re not home, for example. Or a high schooler will tamper their slang when talking to grandma.
You could also argue international business English is a contrived dialect used primarily by ESL speakers. It definitely has many differences from any English spoken natively at home.
bjackman
Yes I experience this regularly with Hochdeutsch and I stand by my point. You still don't speak the language exactly as specified and it's still nonsensical to "correct" someone's grammar/pronunciation if you understood them.
umanwizard
> In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling.
Same is true in the US, though ethnicity is in the mix too. White and black Americans are historically distinct cultural groups which speak different dialects (though obviously, since the end of slavery and segregation the groups are mixing more and more). It is no coincidence that varieties spoken by white people ended up as the “standard”.
da_chicken
I've thought a lot about this one. It really is the message that matters, not the grammar. It's the song, not the notes.
It's also that language is pretty inherently a very fuzzy, ambiguous, and imprecise thing. If I say, "I've left my cup on the table," then you know what I mean even though you've never seen my cup nor my table. Everyone reading that sentence is equally convinced that it's quite concrete, even though everyone is also imagining a completely different cup on a completely different table.
Even more fascinating, it's likely that nobody that ever reads this post will have met me in person. We have not specifically agreed in advance what our words mean, merely relied upon collective agreement based solely on historic usage.
Honestly, the idea that two people who have never met, never seen each other, maybe never even lived in the same hemisphere, might speak the same language and be able to converse freely is an astonishing feat of magic.
jfengel
As far as grammar is concerned, yes, that's true.
But register also matters. A communication is about much more than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other ways.
Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're making it.
lblume
I fail to imagine how one could use "try and" in a resume, without actively trying to.
physarum_salad
Yes and constantly obstructing communication is annoying and boring!
Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
tux1968
> Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
Ellipses are properly written as three dots.
physarum_salad
Anything over one dot communicates the idea effectively.. the difference between two or three dots is irrelevant... Ellipses look like squares......... Close up they are circles....
octo888
I think we can all agree of "5 items or fewer" though right
(jk)
mikewarot
As a EE wannabe, I see everything in terms of impedance matching. It's all a very high dimension matching problem we tend to get good at, in order to survive.
treetalker
Prompted by reading an instance of "try and" instead of "try to" in an HN-linked Register article[1] this morning, I thought this might be of interest to both non-native and native English speakers in our community.
Try to ascertain why I'm on Team "Try To"! (If you feel like trying and! J)
quietbritishjim
I thought from the title that this was going to be about some new exception handling mechanism in a programming language I'm not familiar with. In fact, the article was even more interesting than that, as I've often wondered about this in the past but never quite got to looking it up. Thank you!
onionisafruit
That’s exactly what happened with me. I expected some interesting programming content but ended up spending 20 minutes (so far) thinking about English grammar.
cxr
In his comments on the use of symbols P and V in semaphores, Dijkstra gave the reason for choosing P as it having come from "probeer te verlagen", which he infamously explained that when translated into English means "try and decrease" [sic].
Waterluvian
To me, “try to catch me!” feels more formal than “try and catch me!” Which feels kinda playful, but are both saying basically the same thing.
posix86
Basically yes, but I do hear nuance, idk if it's right - "try and" feels more daring, like "I think you can't", while "try to" feels more neutral, just a command.
segmondy
You are right on the nuance. "try and catch me" for me, means I'm going to give it my all not to be caught and I believe I will not be caught. Good luck, try and catch me.
"Try to catch me" means I think you might have some chance.
Waterluvian
Yeah like if a kid runs off and says “try to catch me!” It’s a “c’mon and play!” But “try and catch me” is a challenge, a dare, a taunt even.
refactor_master
Interestingly this pattern also exists in Danish (though not for the same reasons). Correctly speaking you’d say “try to…” which is “prøv at…”, but since the infinitive “at” and “og” sort of both turned into /ə/ when quickly spoken and you get “prøv og…”.
arnsholt
Pseudo coordination is a fun phenomenon in Scandinavian. Lots of detail in NALS: https://tekstlab.uio.no/nals#/chapter/65 but an important difference with English is that the Scandinavian construction occurs with many more verbs in the first conjunct, not just _try_.
zvr
The whole parent directory of "Phenomena" https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena-by-category is an amazing source of information!
StevenWaterman
I might have to adopt this way of differeniating OR and XOR in English https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/alternative-one
dcminter
British English speaker here (southern demographic) - I'd say "to" but "and" doesn't feel wrong so I think it's pretty prevalent.
I'm curious how common it is in Indian English.
foysavas
The "and" in "try and..." may be a shorthand for the material implication of two temporal modal paths:
"try and X" = can X -> must X = not can X or must X
That said, the word "both" doesn't collocate before "try and X" because it instead pushes us toward an interpretation as logical conjunction:
"both try and X" = can X and must X
Likewise, despite the usage of "try not to", the phrase "try not and" doesn't show up, because under material implication the phrase becomes nonsense:
"try not and X" = not can X -> must X = can X or must X
Possibly-interesting comparison: in Japanese, the way to talk about trying to do some verb-phrase X, is "Xて見る" — which is usually literally translated as "we'll try [X]ing", but which breaks down into "[verb-phrase X in present tense] [the verb "to see" in whatever tense you mean.]"
Which means that the construction can be most intuitively framed (at least by an English speaker) as either "we'll see [what happens when] we [X]"... or, more relevantly, "we'll try [X] and see [what happens/how it goes]." Or, for short: "we'll try and [X]."