Whats the difference between gerund and infinitive while the verbs are the same?
Most of the time the meaning does not change with the selection of a gerund or an infinitive. “Begin” is like that: “began learning” and “began to learn” mean the same thing. There are just a few verbs and expressions that have a different meaning depending on whether you use a gerund or infinitive. “Try” is one of them, and the difference in meaning is not much; it’s quite slight. “Try to work” means “make an effort,” and “try working” expresses more of an experiment to see if an action will be effective. When we have a problem, we try lots of things to solve it; we “try doing” different things. Another one is “stop.” If you use “stop” with an infinitive, it is automatically an infinitive of purpose, the reason you stopped. Example “I stopped to make dinner.” You stopped because you had to make dinner. With a gerund, the gerund is the thing that stops. I stopped writing to make dinner. The writing is what stops. So the infinitive expresses purpose/reason, and the gerund is the direct
