Eli5: why is it that nearly every verb that gets translated into English is translated as “to X”? For example; German: “kaufen”=English: “to buy”; Spanish: “gusto” =English: “to like”. Why is that?
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Why is “to” put before the verb’s plain form? Tradition or history: traditionally some people thought that the infinitive in English was best described as the “to” form. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language argues (chapter 14, section 1.4.) that the “to” is not really part of the verb as such, rather a subordinator for verb phrases; but traditionally dictionary makers and older school grammars would say that “to make” is the infinitive, the form used after, for example, “she wants” — “she wants _to_ go.” The argument over a special infinitive form that uses “to” versus just a plain form (dictionary-headword form) plus a verb-phrase subordinator isn’t really ELI5. (One other person here calls it “contested.”) But the answer that people used to think that “to” marks the infinitive, and that lots of people still think that way at least when putting together dictionaries, might be ELI5 enough.
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