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Guest Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

Began/begun

Hello all

Can somebody please explain to me when to use began and when to use begun. I would like some examples please.

thanx a lot in advance.
  

Top answer

'Began' is the simple past form: 'I began to study Greek last September'. '

  • 'Began' is the simple past form: 'I began to study Greek last September'.
  • '
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5 Answers
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'Began' is the simple past form: 'I began to study Greek last September'.

'Begun' is the past participial form: 'I have not yet begun to study Latin'; 'His social studies, begun in the 1960s, are still uncompleted.'
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One problem you have to remind is some people use 'began' for 'begun'.

My google survey resulted in:
have/'ve began .... 62,480
has began .......51,300
had began .......51,000

paco
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There are illiterate people out there for sure, paco, and we get our share of them on the internet. As we were speaking of on the 'to...too' thread, watch out for google statistics! I don't think that we have to remind anyone that some people err.

In this case, 62,000 (X 'have began') out of 3,000,000 ('have begun') or 51,000 (X 'has began') out of 3,700,000 ('has begu
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Hello MrMicawber

I put my message as an answer to Guest. I'm sorry if you took it as the one addressed to you.

Yes, as you suggest, it is a problem to use the numbers of the net sites where a target usage for the purpose of knowing whether the usage is appropriate or not. We have to know its ratio to the site numbers of possibly right usages. Another problem of using google a
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Thank you. I see 'begun' used wrongly so often these days I needed to see I wasn't hallucinating. :-)

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