Point of grammar?

[nimthiriel]

Why do people say  "try and"  instead of  "try to"?

I thought  "try to"  made more sense...

Because if you use  "try and", what you're saying is you're going to try, AND you're going to do something.


"I'm going to try AND open the can of beans"

Rather than

"I'm going to try TO open the can of beans".

Comments

[kirby1024.livejournal.com]

It's phonologically more convenient. Vowel to vowel requires less effort than vowel to consonant.

Although, semantically you could think of it as "I'm going to try and I will succeed at what I'm trying"...

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

Because it can be two seperate things - you can try to open a jar, or you can try and see if reinstalling the driver fixes the problem. The try part in the second isn't applied to the installing the driver, its to see if that fixes the problem.

Then people are lazy and the two blur together :)