Infinitive + a, or infinitive, or infinitive + para, or something else

Friday, August 17, 2012

If you are somewhat fluent in a Romance language but still find yourself tripped up by slight differences in what to use after the infinitive, this should be even more annoying: an article in Spanish on just how to use the verb instar, because sometimes there isn't even any agreement among native speakers. According to this one the Fundación del Español Urgente in Peru believes that "instar a que" is correct, and not "instar que" or "instar para que". All languages have such occurrences where an officially accepted form is promoted but not often used by everyone, but whether such usage is like:

-- the Japanese 全然 when used for positive adjectives (全然大丈夫) which technically should only be for negative ones but nobody cares, or

-- the English "your guyses" where you may end up coming across as uneducated,

is the difficult part to ascertain. You don't want to end up on one extreme where you end up sounding like a textbook, or the other extreme where anything a native speaker says is taken as gospel and you end up acquiring some habits that make others cringe when they hear it, deserved or not.


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