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?
In: Other
You are referring to what can be called the ‘to-infinitive’.
Modern grammar is a collection of old habits 🙂 Habits develop and change, often with group or geographical specificity, at least initially.
At some point in the past, in England, in the middle-ages between a shift from old English and Middle English, the preposition ‘to’ became associated with verbs in a way that seems to suggest SOMETHING but it’s kind of tricky to say WHAT, exactly, people had in mind. Is ‘to’ being used as a modal verb? Is the verb being used as a noun??? It’s relatively contested.
In other languages, the ‘to’ preposition appears not to have been on this same cultural journey.
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