Sunday, April 19, 2009

Infinitives split are made to be

Part of me can sympathise with those unfortunates who cannot bear a split infinitive – I find my own creepy crawlies in the language jungle

But even at school I just did not get it. It makes no sense to say that they should not be split in English because they are nor split in Latin

Well, of course they’re not – Latin infinitives are just one word

And isn’t it tedious to have to learn all those different inflections - amorabissimissimus, abamerameramer, yeh,yeh, whatever

English had the bright idea of turning an infinitive into two words precisely so that it could be split

So there