Two verbs with the same subject

I think I have food poisoning… Creo que tengo una intoxicación alimentaria … I understand this is correct, but is the following considered a bit better: "Creo tener una intoxicación alimentaria …"?

I'm far from an expert and, I see by your badge, far below you, but it seems that I read somewhere that when 2 verbs are used together the second is in the infinitive, as you have done. Hopefully our Mexican Yoda Cristian will enlighten us.

Huummmmm Help you I will hummm...Correct your sentences are young padawan! Hola a todos! Thanks for the title "Mexican Yoda" I laughed so loud, people might think I'm going crazy here at the office! haha! As I already stated (in a yoda kind of way) both sentences are correct, the first one "flows" better, at least to my ears, but the 2nd one sounds like it follows the grammar rules better and it feels more formal. To be honest, I had to look this up, because I know there are some rules, and sometimes we use them without really knowing them fully, and just say it as we think it sounds better, needless to say, we should stick to these rules, but on the everyday, slang spanish, sometimes we do it correctly and sometimes we dont...anyway, moving on... It is called "Perfirasis verbal", and it happens when " an auxiliar verbs, influences or affects, another verb, usually the main vebr, and constructed in a non-personal form (either in infitive, gerund or participle), without changing the meaning of the sentence, for example...No puedo entrar/I can't enter (poder and entrar)". You can find the spanish version of this statement on the paragraph below. So, in this case the 2 verbs are "creer" and "tener", as I mentioned before, the second one seems to follow the rule. The 2nd verb "tener" which in this case is the main verb, and it is found in infinitive, while the auxiliar verb, creer, is not in infinitive, but it is conjugated in present for the 1st person, "Yo" which can be added if you wish "Yo creo tener una intoxicación alimentaria...but it is not necessary. Also, there are some cases where you can find 2 verbs together that do not follow the rules of a periphrasis, and even have a different name (which I haven't found yet) for example " No he comido aun" (I haven't eaten yet)..."he" comes from the verb "haber" and "comido" from "comer", In this case the 2 verbs are not in infititive. Another example would be, "Estoy corriendo" /I am running, with verbs "estar" and "correr" also not in infinitive, if we wanted to use periphrasis the only option i can think of would be, "podría correr" , here the second verb is found in infitinive and the first one influences the main verb. "Se denominan perífrasis verbales las combinaciones sintácticas en las que un verbo auxiliar incide sobre un verbo auxiliado, principal o pleno, construido en forma no personal (es decir, en infinitivo, gerundo o participio), sin dar lugar a dos predicaciones distintas: No puedo entrar; Iremos considerando cada caso particular; Llevo escritas diez páginas. El verbo auxiliar suele aparecer conjugado, como en los ejemplos anteriores, pero puede no estarlo: Para poder entrar necesitamos autorización; Debe empezar a cantar." Saludos!

Many thanks for the enlightenment / detailed response, Christian.

One quick follow up question: what criteria is used to recognize the main and auxiliary/helper verbs?

¡Sí, es verdad que Christian es nuestro Yoda de Español! :) Namaste.

Hola! Muchas gracias Patrice haha. Dan, that is a very good question!...for perifrasis, is easier, the infitive one (or the 2nd verb) is the main one. For other sentences , I will rely a lot on the context, even I as a native speaker sometimes find it difficult to identify the main verb at first sight. In a general way, auxiliar verbs seem to be placed before the main one, and sometimes are short like "he" and "has" (both from "hacer") or "se" (from "ser") . On the other hand sometimes It might be that the 2 verbs are the main verbs...but I think this only happens when the sentence is a compound sentence. For example ¿Te sirvo un refresco o compramos jugo ?. Sirvo from Servir and Compramos from Comprar....which one is the main one? Each one of them (to me) are main, because neither one of them aids the other, It just gives you 2 options, and it is a compound sentence, but in the case of simple sentences, there are just a few I can think of and they ususally have "he" or 'ha" ...."Han habido muchos terremotos en Chile" (there has been a lot of earthquakes in Chile). Have a great friday!

Muchas Gracias, Cristian.

Awesome!