Written by Dyami Millarson

Shortened forms of infinitives are limited to a few irregular verbs in Eilauners and these shortened forms only occur at the end of sentences (with the only exception of hè which may also we used as a predicate form). These forms are somewhat rare or uncommon in writing because of their colloquial nature, although they do traditionally occur in the spoken language. The infinitives of irregular verbs wazze (to be), wezze (to become), hewwe (to have), seze (to say), leze (to put) have the shortened forms wà, wè, hè, see, lee.

• Dat wil ‘k n’t see. I do not mean to say that.
• Hò kin dat wà? How can that be possible?
• ‘k Sil ‘t der lee. I will put it there.
• Mooi him sil ‘t aik n’t wat wè. It will not work with him either.
• Wat wotte hè? What do you want to have?
• Hè jimme dat syn? Have you guys seen that?

There are two kinds of infinitives in Eilauners: The infinitive ending in -e and the nominalised infinitive (gerund) ending in -en. The shortened infinitives corresponds only to the non-nominalised infinitive ending in -e. The gerund has no shortened form.