FGC Goal #1: American Slang #30 TRY + AND + VERB

Current Goal: Learn 50 American Phrases in 25 Days!

Hello my fellow foreign English speakers who aspire to speak with a native-like American accent!

In this video you can watch me TRY AND SPEAK with the General American Pronunciation, and while I’m not perfect at it yet, I’m quite hopeful that at some point down the line I’ll be capable of sounding just like an American hailing form Midwest.

Also, in this video you can witness me using a peculiar grammar construct which came to my attention while I was reading one of the GONE series books, namely – TRY followed by AND and then followed by another verb instead of TRY followed by the verb in infinitive.

Let’s say, for example, you want to convey the following message: “People working in a team should do their best to make sure responsibility is shared equally among all team members.”

Here’s how you might say it:

Good team work means all people involved try to do their best in terms of fair and equal task distribution.

Now, it’s not incorrect, but here’s how the three word combination “try to do” would sound according to today’s American English speech pattern TRY + AND + VERB:

Good team work means all people involved TRY AND DO their best in terms of fair and equal task distribution.

Yes, I agree – it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense from the logical standpoint yet it’s exactly how native American English speaking people speak!

Thanks for tuning in,

Robby 😀