I'm, as I like to point out, Norwegian. That means English is my second language, which we, when I was young, started learning in school when we were in 3rd grade, which would mean around 9-10 years old. (In these ages of WWW and internationalization, they start in preschool, around 6 or 7 years old, I think.)

In Norwegian, the infinitive marker (English "to") is "å", pronounced much like "awe". The English conjunction "and" has it's Norwegian equivalent in the word "og", pronounced in exactly the same way as "å" (thus with a silent "g").

This means trouble. It's a common grammatical problem for kids in school to discern between the two words, since the pronounciation is the same for both. So we make rules and rhymes to remember.

The trouble starts when we're learning English in addtion. In Norwegian, there's no alternative when we try something. The Norwegian word for "try" is "prøve", and when we try something, we will "prøve å ...". We use the infinitive marker.

But it's difficult also when writing and speaking in English, which uses both "try and" and "try to", and maybe more often "and". For us Norwegians, it's most natural to use "to", because that's the equivalent to our "å", which is our only alternative in the matter.

So, after this rather lengthy introduction to the dilemma, here it is: When do you say "try to", and when do you say "try and"? Are there any absolute rules, or can you use whichever of them you want at any time?

Trav"this has been bugging me for years, after our teacher couldn't give us a definitive answer"holt.