Hi Ruth!

Here is one shortcut way to conjugate a verb.  You have to
intersect the tense "time" with the tense "type."

The tense time is, of course, past, present or future.  The tense
type is either simple, perfect or progressive (these are called
"aspect").

Make a little chart with past present and future across the top, and
simple perfect and progressive along the side.

............. past ............... present ............... future
simple:    counted           count                 will count
perfect:    had counted     have counted     will have counted
prog:       was counting    am counting       will be counting

The remarkable thing is how much system and regularity there is
between these forms of count.

You "transform" from simple to perfect, and from perfect to
progressive, be exactly regular rules.

Perfect uses "have" in the three tense forms, had - have - will have,
and then adds the past participle of the main verb ("counted").

Note that information as to pastness goes with the auxiliary verb:
had, have, will have.  The actual verb stays the same in each case.

Progressive uses "to be" in the three tense forms, was - am - will
be, and then adds the present participle of the main verb
("counting").

There is also a fourth layer, perfect-progressive, which gives you
these three verbs:

had been counting, have been counting, will have been counting.

This gives 12 forms of "to count."

Then, you can the do every one of the above into the passive voice,
giving 24 total "conjugations."

But there are also conditional, subjunctive, and other forms that
layer overtop of these, using "would," "may," and "might."

Every verb starts in the "infinitive" (i.e., "not related to time," "not
finite," not defined in a specific moment of time): in English, the
infinitive, which acts as the "name" of the verb (i.e., the noun form
of an action) is the "to-" form, "to count."  This is why the infinitive
functions as a noun.

To the infinitive you start adding 1- tense (past present future), 2-
aspect (simple, perfect, progressive, perfect-progressive); 3- mood
(indicative, conditional, subjunctive, etc); and 4- voice (active or
passive).

Obviously there are about 75 or 100 transformations, or
"conjugations," of every verb in English.

You get into some wierd results, like "I may have been being
counted," but "c'est la grammaire!"

This is a partial answer to your questions, which I pieced together
bit by bit with considerable effort.  No one ever taught me how to
conjugate a verb either.  This was considered a waste of valuable
instruction minutes.

Yours, Robert Einarsson
www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb