Conjugation of Verbs

No, this is not Back to School - rather, it is a rap on the knuckles to all those who have eschewed whatever was learned in school in favor of a more casual approach, to wit: "...the lecture was began with an announcement ..."

To be sure, English is a difficult language.  Embrace it.  Be proud of it.  It is, after all, the accepted international language of the United Nations.  But, truth be told, all languages are "difficult," if one wants to speak them correctly, and there is quite a bit of merit in doing so.  Conjugating verbs is one aspect of speaking correctly.

Take the verb to begin.  It is an irregular verb, in that it does not conform to the "usual" conjugations for such verbs as to dance or to walk.  The present tense of to begin is fairly straightforward: I begin, you begin, he/she/it begins, etc., but the past tenses are more onerous, especially when getting into subjunctives and conditionals (what?), or, worse, the past perfect (huh?) or pluperfect (!).  Are your eyes crossed yet?  Not to worry - contact lenses to the rescue.

In the sample phrase above, there are two problems, one of which is much more egregious than the other.  First, the phrase is stated in the passive voice (the lecture was began).  To reframe the phrase for more impact, one might write "...we began the lecture by announcing ..."  But a much more troublesome error above is the conjugation of began, which in this case should be the pluperfect, was begun (the sequence is begin, began, begun).

I don't believe it is essential to know the nomenclature for the various conjugation iterations; what is important is to know how to apply the tenses, in which context, and what the appropriate tense should be.  Please refer to http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/begin.html, a website that provides all the permutations of correct conjugations.  Input your desired verb, and voila!