When I started learning French I began to hear and see a term that I had never heard or seen before. This in itself is not a problem but whenever it was used it was in a way that assumed I knew what on Earth the term meant.
When using two verbs in one sentence you conjugate the first in reference to the subject, and put the second in its infinitive form.
Ok, wait what?
So this is actually something we use in English, but we do not learn it in the terms of infinitive verb forms.
I want to eat a some cake.
The primary verb in this sentence, that is the primary action, is that "I want" something. "To eat" something is the secondary verb/action. So "want" is connected to "I" and "eat" is in its infinitive form. But what does that mean for English? Most verbs do not change much at all when we use them.
I eat
You eat
He/she eats
We eat
They eat
You (all) eat
The infinitive form is like the name of the verb, or the base form. It is the way the verb is without any conjugating. In English we put the word "to" in front of the verb.
To eat
To want
To be
To say
To talk
To think
In many languages other than English, certainly the romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese ect.) If you want to look in a dictionary for how a particular verb is used, you need to know the infinitive form. I speak French so we will use it as an example. That first example sentences would be:
Je veux manger de gâteau.
"veux" is the conjugated form of the verb "Vouloir". "Manger" is the infinitive form of the verb which is "to eat" in English. So with this sentence you can keep "manger" as it is no matter who is doing the wanting.
Je veux manger de gâteau
Tu veux manger de gâteau
Il/elle veut manger de gâteau
Nous voulons manger de gâteau
Ils/elles veulent manger de gâteau
Vous voulez manger de gâteau
In most of the Romance languages verbs can be categorized by the ending a verb takes in the infinitive. In French there are three: "er", "ir" and "re"
Manger
Finir
Vendre
Each infinitive ending goes with a different pattern of conjugation that can help you learn how the verbs are conjugated, and if you are unfamiliar with a word you can guess the conjugation based on the ending, so it is really important to know the infinitive form of verbs in romance languages.
In Norwegian the infinitive form is indicated by putting the letter "Ã¥" before the verb without any suffix.
Ã¥ spise - to eat
Ã¥ ville - to want
å være - to be
This system is much closer to the English system and is also present in Icelandic, only in Icelandic the bit before the verb is not "å" but rather "að"
að borða - to eat
að vilja - to want
að vera - to be
In some languages such as Irish, Chinese, and some of the Baltic/slavic languages there is no infinitive form. Each of these languages has its own way of expressing the same ideas, which I won't get into here.
I think the term "Infinitive verb" was the first grammatical/linguistic term that I can remember wondering why I had never heard it before. When we learn these things in our native tongues we learn them primarily through usage, but even when we learn about it in school the language and word choice is much more simple:
"If you have a second verb in a sentence you have to put "to" in front of the second verb." Teachers have to keep things simple for the kids, because talking about infinitive forms and auxiliary verbs will make anyone's head spin.
Don't let yourself get stuck by some of the unexplained jargon you will come across on your language learning journey. Don't hesitate to take a moment and look unknown terms up. You can also contact me if you have questions, if I don't know the answer I will find someone who does. Contact me here, at my email, or on social media:
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Go out there and be awesome!
