In a recent lesson, one of my English language students said the following ‘when I was there, I tried and catch a bus’. When I told her that the correct expression in this case is ‘I tried to catch a bus’, she asked me to explain why there was a difference, since she had learnt that to ‘try to’ do something and to ‘try and’ do something, were interchangeable. I must admit that, as is often the case with my teaching, her question got me thinking and doing some research (I just LOVE the English language!) So, here’s my understanding of the distinction…
Saying ‘try and’ may seem harmless because many of us use it as a normal, everyday idiom, but in formal writing ‘try to’ is usually preferred. ‘Try and’ is standard and fully established in British English (especially in speech). However, for learners of English at all but an advanced level, my advice would be to avoid using ‘try and’, because while ‘try to’ can be inflected, that is to say that it can be used in all tenses and sentence structures (tried to help; trying to win), ‘try and’ cannot. For example, ‘try and’ can be used only in the Simple Present and Future tenses or with auxiliary and modal verbs. The following sentences work with ‘try and’ only because they use the root of the verb;
- I try and visit my father every weekend (Present Simple)
- You’ll try and drive there tomorrow (Future ‘will’)
- I’m going to try and write a letter (Future ‘go’)
- Did you try and eat your lunch? (Past Simple as a question, with auxiliary verb ’to do’)
whereas, in every other tense it does not work because the verb ‘try’ needs to be modified;
- He’s trying and to concentrate (Present Progressive)
- I tried and to catch the mouse (Past Simple)
- I have tried and to speak French (Present Perfect)
- He tries and to visit my father every weekend (compare this with the first sentence in the examples above – here, simply changing the person, not the tense, excludes it) (Present Simple)
So, why is this the case? Why do we have this complication in English? After all, my French students studying English would quite reasonably ask why we don’t just simply say ‘try to’ in every situation, as in the French ‘essayer de…’…and those are my thoughts too. In my view, saying ‘try and eat’, for example, can sound like it is describing two separate actions, 1) trying and 2) eating, and therefore it can be ambiguous or misleading.
The reason the expression ‘try to’ is used is because it is in fact, idiomatic, in the same way as ‘go and (see)’, ‘come and (visit), or ‘be sure and (say hello)’. ‘Try and’ has been used for centuries, mainly in spoken English but also by writers like Dickens, Austen and Twain, among others, but within the world of English language studies, authorities generally agree that while it’s standard and socially acceptable, it should be avoided in some formal contexts.
I agree, and also, because there are definite limitations to when you can say ‘try and’, there are none with ‘try to’, so I would advise learners to ‘try to’ avoid complication and ‘try to’ use ‘try to’ in most situations!
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Thank you,
Martin
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