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Comment by jmbwell | Hacker News Reader

The point I was waiting for them to get to was saved for last: entails completion.

Try to do something, you might or might not do it. “I’m going to try to persuade them to decide in my favor.”

Try and do something, you expect to get it done one way or another. “I’m goin down there to try and straighten them out.”

I don’t have a long history of research in this going back to the 1500s, but I grew up in southeast Texas, and this is how I’ve always understood it to be used around here, when it is used with any intention at least.

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Interesting, where I’m from in southern california, “try and” doesn’t entail completion. (The article only mentions this for “go and”, which here does indeed entail expected completion.)

Funny how the grammar write-ups treat it as basically synonymous with "try to," but the lived nuance can be totally different depending on where you grew up.

Yeah, maybe it's regional. I hear "tryan get some peace and quiet" about the same as "tryta get some piece and quiet. Maybe the former is more confident. But tone of voice probably matters more than the words.

FWIW I grew up mostly in the Northeast.

I'm surprised there was no mention of accent. For their example "It’s tough when you’re trying and finish(ing) an assignment under pressure.", I can't help but hear "It's tough when you're tryna finish an assignment under pressure.", which really is more like "trying to" than "trying and finishing".

Yeah if I wrote "tryna" out nicely, I would spell it "trying to". So but that's my accent accounted for. There are a lot out there.

This makes sense - "tryna" -> "tryn ta" -> "trying to". "Tryan" -> try and.

I concur with "tryan" - it's its own word, IMO, in my mind. I had never seen "Try and X" sentences written out before this article, even though I say "tryan" all the time.

Doesn’t “try” imply possibility of failure to complete?

"Could you wash the dog?"

Is not a question asking whether the person is capable of washing the dog. It's a command phrased politely.

"Try to wash the dog"

"Try and wash the dog"

If you had no prior information on whether the dog likes water or not, I'd say that the try-and version expresses a greater level of confidence that washing the dog will be successful, in other words it's a command.

Whereas try-to could be read either straight (this task may fail) or as a command phrased politely.

The linguistic prescriptivist in in me cringes at "try and", but I recognize usage has moved on.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/were-going-to-explai...

When prescriptivism is balking at usages that have been continuously in effect for four centuries, the problem is not with the usage. The prescriptivism you're using is suspect.

Prescriptivism is silly anyway, you'd be better off counting sand.

Yeah. Prescriptivism may have a worthwhile role to play. But it needs to be a lot more thought out than "what some authority wrote 75 years ago".

Prescriptivism is good. I could care less.

Haha I love it. Yiddish constructions ftw.

It still implies possibility of failure, but in the example of the commenter above, that possibility is almost low enough to the point of expectation (but not quite) and "try to" would increase that possibility in the direction of failure. Nuance!

As someone who understands usage of “try and” outside of the Yale definition, it suggests will and belief in possibility, which is probable unless the speaker does not sound confident, in which case it’s still will and belief in possibility but not necessarily will and belief in probability.

So when I ask people to do me a favor, use "try and". And when I need to answer somebody, use "try to".

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