alt Hacker NewsIt'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.
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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]
First thing I thought of when reading the linked post! You explained it for a non-Norwegian audience better than I could have too!
I think "try and stop me" is more colloquial in my brand of English too.
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
the first "att" (that) is pronounced similar to its orthography but the second one (to) is pronounced "o".https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/att#Swedish