Tagalog | About World Languages By Irene Thompson | Updated September 27, 2015 by Irene Thompson Mabuhay – Welcome Tagalog (Filipino) belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family . The name of the language is derived from tagá-ílog, from tagá– ‘native’+ ílog ‘river’ It is spoken by 21.5 million people as a first language and as a second language by a great majority of Filipinos. Tagalog is also spoken in Canada, Guam, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and USA. The total number of speakers of Tagalog worldwide is estimated to be 24.2 million ( Ethnologue ). It is the sixth most-spoken language in the U.S. and the lingua franca of Filipinos anywhere in the world.

Tagalog was originally native to the southern part of Luzon, prior to spreading as a second language over all the islands of the Philippine archipelago, due to its selection as the basis for Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, in 1937 and to the fact that Tagalog is spoken in the Philippine capital of Manila , the largest city of the country. From 1961 to 1987, Tagalog was also known as Pilipino. In 1987, the name was changed to Filipino. →Click on the MLA Interactive Language Map to find out where Tagalog is spoken in the United States. Status Tagalog is one of the major languages of the Republic of the Philippines . It functions as its lingua franca and de fcto national working language of the country. It is used as the basis for the development of Filipino , the national language of the Philippines, a country with 181 documented languages. It is spoken in central and southern Luzon , in Manila , the capital of the Philippines, and on some of the other islands. According to the Philippine Census of 2000, 21.5 million people claim Tagalog as their first language.

In addition, it is estimated that 50 million Filipinos speak Tagalog as a second language. English is the language of higher education and a lingua franc a in the Philippines, second only to Filipino. Many Filipinos who are fluent in English frequently switch between Tagalog and English for a variety of reasons. This mixed language is called Taglish . It is more common among educated city dwellers than in rural areas. Frequent contact between Tagalog-speaking and Spanish -speaking people during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines has resulted in Philippine Creole Spanish known as Chabacano . Since 1940, Filipino has been taught in schools throughout the Philippines. Tagalog is also the language of major literary works, of films, and of the media.. Dialects Stress Stress falls on either the last or the next-to-the-last syllable of words, and is accompanied by a lengthening of the vowel. Grammar Tagalog is an ergative-absolutive language, i.e., it treats the subject of an intransitive verb like the object of a transitive verb, but distinctly from the subject of a transitive verb . The basic features of Tagalog noun morphology are outlined below.

Nouns Nouns are not marked for case or number. Only some nouns borrowed from Spanish are marked for gender, e.g., amigo ‘friend’ (masculine) – amiga ”friend’ (feminine).Nouns are usually preceded by case markers that are divided into two classes: one set for names of people (personal) and one for everything else (common). There are three markers: Absolutive markers that mark the actor of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb; Markers that mark the object of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive one; Markers, like prepositions, that mark location, direction, etc. Pronouns Personal pronouns are marked for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, plural). There is an inclusive and an exclusive 1st person plural pronoun. Inclusive form includes the addressee, while the exclusive form does not. There is no gender distinction in the 3rd person singular, i.e., between he and she. Personal pronouns refer only to humans. There is no equivalent of the English it. There are three demonstrative pronouns.

One is equivalent to the English this, the other two distinguish between a near and not so near that. Verbs Tagalog verbs are morphologically complex and take on a variety of affixes to indicate focus, tense, aspect, and mood. Verbal affixes consist of a variety of prefixes , suffixes , infixes , and circumfixes . An interesting feature of Tagalog verbs, as in other in Malayo-Polynesian languages, is its focus (or trigger) system. This means that the role of the noun marked by the absolutive marker is reflected in the verb. There are several triggers: actor, object, location, beneficiary, instrument, and reason. All of the triggers, with the exception of the actor, are transitive. Tagalog distinguishes between actual and hypothetical events. Actual events can be viewed as complete or incomplete. Complete events are in the perfective aspect, and incomplete events are in the imperfective aspect. Word order Tagalog is a verb-initial language. The order of other constituents that follow the verb is relatively free, but there is a general preference for the subject to precede the object.

Numbers and other quantifiers generally precede nouns, whereas demonstratives, adjectives and possessive pronouns may either precede or follow the noun they modify. Vocabulary Tagalog vocabulary is Austronesian in origin with borrowings from Spanish, English , Min Nan Chinese , Malay, Sanskrit , Arabic , Tamil , Persian , Kapampangan , and other Austronesian languages. Spanish loanwords reflect over 300 years of Spanish domination, while English loanwords resulted from half-century of American control over the Philippines. Here are some examples of borrowed words in Tagalog. Tagalog word Top The first book in Tagalog was Doctrina Cristiana published in 1593. The first grammars and dictionaries of Tagalog were created by Spanish clergymen during the 300-year Spanish occupation of the Philippines. Although it is sometimes believed that each province in the Philippines had its own ancient alphabet, Spanish writers of the 16th century reported that use of writing was found only in the Manila area at the time of first contact with Spain. Writing spread to the other islands later, in the middle of the 16th century.

The Spaniards usually called the ancient Filipino script “Tagalog letters”, regardless of the language for which it was used. The so-called “Tagalog letters” were actually a syllabic script called Baybayin , which was used until the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Latin alphabet that is still in use today. The word baybayin (from Tagalog baybay ‘spell’) means ‘alphabet’. The Baybayin alphabet was probably developed from the Javanese script that was adapted from the Pallava script, the latter itself derived from the Brahmi script of ancient India. Baybayin was mainly used for letters, poetry, and incantations.Today, the Baybayin alphabet is used mainly for decorative purposes, although there are attempts to revive its use. Baybayin is a syllabic alphabet, written from left to right in horizontal lines, in which each consonant has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are represented either by separate letters, or by diacritics over the consonant. For instance, a dot over the consonant changes the vowel from /a/ to /i/ or /e/, while a dot under the consonant changes it to /o/ or /u/.

A plus sign under the consonant indicates that the vowel is mute, as in the example below form Wikipedia . Today, Tagalog/Filipino is written with the 26-letter Latin alphabet. There is a fairly good correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. The letters c, f, j, q, v, x, z are used mostly in foreign names and English or Spanish loanwords. They are usually not represented in the Tagalog alphabet. The orthography does not mark stress or vowel length. The glottal stop /ʔ/ is not represented in writing at all. The velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ is represented by the digraph ng. The current Tagalog alphabet, called abakada, is given below: A Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tagalog. Artikulo 1 Ang lahat ng tao’y isinilang na malaya at pantay-pantay sa karangalan at mga karapatan. Sila’y pinagkalooban ng katwiran at budhi at dapat magpalagayan ang isa’t isa sa diwa ng pagkakapatiran. Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Did You Know? English has borrowed a few words from Tagalog. Among them are the following: boondocks from Tagalog bundok ‘mountain’. Adopted by occupying American soldiers in the Philippines for ‘remote and wild place’. Reinforced or re-adopted during World War II. manila LEARN TAGALOG @ Tagalog Lang LEARN TAGALOG Tagalog is the basis of the Filipino national language. When you ask a native of the Philippines what the country’s official language is, the answer will be English and Filipino . That is decreed in the country’s Constitution and that is what is taught in schools. Highly educated Filipinos are very compulsive about differentiating between the Tagalog language and the Filipino language. A Tagalog sentence has few borrowings from English and Spanish, while a Filipino sentence liberally uses English- and Spanish-derived words, as well as words and expressions from other Philippine languages, such as Cebuano , Ilocano , and Kapampangan .

Since 2002 , the aim of this website has been to help foreigners converse with the average Filipino who naturally mixes Tagalog with words from English, Spanish, and other Philippine languages. Don’t pronounce “Tagalog” like the English word ‘tagalong’ — No! WHAT IS TAGALOG? Tagalog refers to a people and to their language. 1. The Tagalogs (the Tagalog people) live in Manila and nearby areas. 2. The Tagalog language is the basis of the Filipino national language. Ask a native of the Philippines if the country’s official language is Tagalog , and the answer will be “No, it’s not called Tagalog, but Filipino .” This is because that is what the law says and that is what is taught in the educational system. The national language of the Philippines is Filipino. — 1987 Constitution, Article XIV, Section 6 A foreigner who says that the Philippine national language is “Tagalog” may offend politically conscious Filipinos from other parts of the country where Tagalog is not the first language.

Cebuano , Kapampangan , Ilocano and such are NOT mere dialects of Tagalog — they are completely distinct LANGUAGES that are very different from each other. Tagalog and Cebuano are as different as Spanish is from French, if not more so. The same goes with Kapampangan, Ilocano, and other languages spoken in the Philippines , a country of diverse geography with more than 7,000 islands. Now that that lecture is out of the way… Are you ready to start learning Tagalog? Let’s start with the numbers! tagaloglang.com/numbers isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima one, two, three, four, five Here are the colors! tagaloglang.com/colors pula, itim, puti, dilaw Intro to Tagalog Language by Dr. Teresita V. Ramos The Philippines is a Southeast Asian country of some 7,100 islands and islets off the southeast coast of mainland China. It is populated by about 70 million Filipinos.

It is said that there are as many as 300 languages and dialects in these islands which belong to the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. One of the factors that complicate the language situation in the Philippines is diversity. Linguists say there are 75 to 150 native languages spoken by Filipinos. The latest estimate is 109 languages, or 110 if Chavacano is included (McFarland 1994: 83). Although these languages are in some ways grammatically and lexically similar, they are mutually unintelligible. Furthermore, each of the major languages has several dialects that differ, especially at the phonological and lexical levels. Depending on their region of origin, Filipino immigrants will speak at least one dialect of one of these mutually unintelligible languages.

On the basis of a probable 75 mother tongues according to Weber (1989), six are classified as major languages (the percentages indicating the number of native speakers of each language): Tagalog (25%), Cebuano (24%), Ilocano (9%), Hiligaynon (9%), Bicol (6%), Waray (5%), and other (22%). Because of immigration, these major languages as well as Pampango and Pangasinan are represented in America. Filipino in the United States F ilipino (Tagalog) is the national language of the Philippines and the cultural thread that keeps Filipinos all over the world in touch with their roots. To promote cross-cultural and transnational understanding and mutual appreciation, wide access to the Filipino language is essential. Philippine history has strong links with the United States. The country was an American colony from 1900 - 1946. Cooperation between the Philippines and the United States had continued through World War II, in the post-Independence period, and well into the present global economy. In part, because of this strong ties, Filipinos comprise a significant minority in the United States.

Currently, there are about a million Filipinos in the US, and more are coming every year. This increase in the number of Filipinos (predicted to exceed the Chinese by the year 2000) is likely to have a greater impact on American politics and social concerns. This trend therefore requires educating Americans about the Philippines in general and, more specifically, providing our schools and community organizations with materials that help the Filipino-Americans to participate more easily and widely in the life of our nation. According to the 1990 United States Census, Tagalog is the second most commonly-spoken Asian language in the United States, and the sixth non-English language spoken in America. Tagalog is the lingua franca of the Filipinos anywhere in the world. Most Southeast Asian scholars use Tagalog as the tool for research in the Philippines. It is the language of major works in literature and that of Philippine films and songs. A growing number of American universities are regularly offering courses in Tagalog. The expansion of the field can be illustrated by the following facts: in the 1960s, only Hawaii and UCLA were offering regularly-listed courses in Tagalog.

Today, Tagalog courses are offered every year at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, Cornell University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin (Madison), Loyola Marymount University, University of Pennsylvania, Northern Illinois University, University of Pittsburg, and San Francisco State University, all of which recently joined nationwide consortium to promote teaching Tagalog. Filipino - Language Information & Resources Filipino The Filipino language has an intriguing history surrounding its name. Sometimes confused with the Tagalog language from which it is derived, and previously referred to as Pilipino, the Filipino language was not declared the official language of the Philippines until 1987. The Philippine government’s choice to call the national language “Filipino” reflects the complex cultural history associated with the language, a predominant tongue of the Philippines. Classification and Terminology of the Filipino Language The Filipino language is based on the Tagalog language, which is classified as a member of the Austronesian, or Malayo-Polynesian, language family. One of the world’s largest language families, the Austronesian language family is divided into two groups, Central-Eastern and Western. Filipino belongs to the Western, along with the Malay, Indonesian and Javanese languages.

Technically, Filipino is considered a variant of the native Tagalog language of the Philippines. Practically speaking, however, Filipino and Tagalog are essentially the same language. Filipino is considered the proper term, especially by Filipino-speakers who are not of the Tagalog group of peoples. Filipino vs. Tagalog? Filipino and Tagalog, the basis for the modern Filipino language, are mutually intelligible and in fact essentially identical. The grammar and vocabulary between the two languages is identical. The current constitution of the Republic of the Philippines declares Filipino to be the national language, as well as one of the official languages, of the country. There is a significant amount of history behind this decision regarding linguistic terminology. Tagalog is the native language of the Tagalog peoples, a dominant native group of the Philippines. In the 1930s, it was decided that Tagalog would serve as the basis for the national language of the Philippines; this language was called “Wikang Pambansa” (literally “National Language”). This proved problematic, as many non-Tagalog peoples came to see the predominance of the Tagalog language in the country to be equated with Tagalog cultural dominance.

In hopes of giving the language a more nationalistic connotation, it was renamed “Pilipino” in the late 1950s. It was not until 1987 that “Filipino” became the official language of the Philippines. Early History of the Filipino Language Relatively little is known about the Tagalog language upon which Filipino is based. Some linguists maintain that, like the peoples of the Central Philippines, the Tagalog people originated along the Northeastern Mindanao or Eastern Visayas. The first written example of the Tagalog language dates from circa 900 AD. Fragments of Tagalog, Sanskrit, Malay and Javanese appear in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription. The first known book written in the Tagalog language is a Christian Doctrine. Dating from the late 16th century, versions were written in both Spanish and Tagalog. Early Development of the Written Filipino Language Two versions of the Christian Doctrine of 1593, the first known book written in Tagalog, were created – one written in a Latin alphabet and the other in the Baybayin script.

Baybayin is an ancient writing system of the Tagalog language that existed in the Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish. While it bears some resemblance to south Indian languages that influenced the development of many Southeast Asian languages, Baybayin is believed to have descended from the Buginese script of the Bugis people of Sulawesi, an island south of the Philippines. Development of the written Filipino language progressed immensely throughout the years of Spanish occupation. Spanish missionaries and members of the clergy worked on manuals and vocabulary guides to Tagalog, which helped stabilize the language. Spanish Influence on the Tagalog Language In 1565, the first Spanish settlement was established in the Philippines and a period of Spanish colonial rule ensued. Throughout the period of Spanish dominance in the Philippines, the Tagalog language underwent significant evolution. Thanks to Spanish influence, Tagalog gained an enormous number of Spanish language loanwords – today, an estimated 40 percent of informal Tagalog vocabulary used in common speech consists of Spanish loanwords or words derived from Spanish origins. Derived from Tagalog, the modern Filipino language has retained this influence today.

The Philippines After Independence Spain continued to dominate over the Philippines until the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, at which point the United States was awarded control of the Philippines. The Philippines did not gain total freedom until 1946, when it became a fully independent democratic republic. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos imposed a state of martial law in the Republic in 1972, resulting in protests and the development of the People Power Movement. Marcos’s regime was dismantled in 1986. Filipino as an Official Language One year after Ferdinand Marcos’ fall, a new Philippine democratic constitution was ratified. The 1987 constitution of the Republic of the Philippines designated Filipino as the official national language of the Republic. The linguistic debate was revived again in the 1970s and with the drafting of a new Philippine constitution in the 1980s. The 1987 constitution officially declared “Filipino” to be the national language, and made provisions for future evolution of the language in accordance with other Philippine languages.

Today many Filipino-speakers, especially those who are non-Tagalogs, refer to their language as “Tagalog-based.” Filipino Language Today With approximately 14 million members, native Tagalog-speakers make up one of the largest linguistic and cultural groups of the Philippines. Today Filipino serves as the national language of the Philippines and, along with English, is one of the country’s official languages – an impressive feat considering that more than 100 languages exist within the Philippines. Filipino is taught in schools throughout the Philippines and is the official language of education and business. Filipino can also be found in immigrant communities in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Hong Kong. The Filipino language is spoken as a first language by an estimated 15 million people around the world. Get Your FREE Quote Email Address: (required | privacy policy ) Tagalog Language | Effective Language Learning Effective Language Learning Tagalog Language History The Tagalog language is a Philippine language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken primarily in the Philippines. The word Tagalog itself comes from the Philippine word tagailog. This word, when broken down to its component parts, means “native to” and “river”.

Therefore, the word tagailog figuratively translates to mean “river dweller” or “one who is native to the river”. The earliest record of the Tagalog language being written down is from the year 900AD. The Tagalog language can be seen in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which is a thin copper plate inscribed with details in several languages, releasing the bearer from a heavy debt. There are only fragments of the language here, but it they are distinctive enough to be thought of as the Tagalog language, and not Javanese as was once thought. The Tagalog language comes under a little contention these days, as when it became the official language of the Philippines it was renamed Filipino. It is argued by some that the Filipino language is heavily derived from the Tagalog language, but is in fact separate, though most linguists will agree that there simply isn’t enough diversity in the official Tagalog language (or Filipino) and the Tagalog language that was spoken before 1973. Popularity The Tagalog language is spoken mostly in the Philippines, where around a third of the population has this language as their first language.

Most of the rest of the population have the Tagalog language as their second language, around 96% of the population. In total, this is around 60 million speakers, with another 30 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the two official languages of the Philippines, though the Tagalog language is considered to be the national language. The original homeland for the Tagalog language was along the majority of the central and southern areas of the island of Luzon. These days it is spoken natively by inhabitants of smaller islands, such as Marinduque, Mindoro, and Palawan. Language In its standardized form, the Tagalog language is often called Filipino. While the Tagalog language has its roots in the Central Philippine language, it is not considered to be particularly mutually intelligible with other Austronesian languages like Indonesian or Javanese. The first book written in Tagalog was the Doctrina Christiana, written in 1593. This book was written in two versions of Tagalog, as well as Spanish. These two versions of the Tagalog language were only different in their use of either Latin script or Baybayin script.

The Baybayin script was used prior to the Spanish occupation, but only consists of 14 consonants and 3 vowels. Due to the Spanish occupation, which lasted for over 300 years, there is a relatively heavy Spanish influence to the Tagalog language. Many loanwords have been taken from the Spanish language and are still used in the language today. The Tagalog language uses code-mixing very frequently in its language. Code-mixing is where foreign words are brought into the language that is being spoken, but they become subject to the rules and regulations of that language. For example, English words are often spoken in the Tagalog language, but they are subject to the grammar of Tagalog. The mixing of these languages, because the primary language that this is done with is English, is called colloquially Taglish. Why Learn The Tagalog Language? In terms of the Philippines itself, this is a beautiful area of the world to visit. Officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, this Southeast Asian country is one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world. Essentially, this means that there is a massive range of beautiful places in the Philippines, from stunning beaches and mountains, to thousands of unique island locations.

There are nearly 100 million speakers of the Tagalog language worldwide, as the language itself is used by those who have frequently travelled or emigrated around the world. In the U.S., for example, it is the fourth most spoken foreign language in the home, after Spanich, French and Chinese. It is not a language that is spoken about in the media often, as the Philippines are not a major political power, but the Tagalog language is certainly very widely spoken, much more than it would appear from many media channels. Tagalog: a fun language to learn in the Philippines! - Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips Tagalog: a fun language to learn in the Philippines! Tagalog: a fun language to learn in the Philippines! by Benny Lewis In this post, I’d like to give a summary about some cool features of Tagalog and my impressions of it for those of you curious! Best news: Encouraging locals When describing features of a language if you leave out context of how it’s spoken and who’s speaking it and focus just on grammar and vocabulary, there’s no way you can get a full picture of it.

Usually I title these summaries as “Why X is easy” (as I did in German and Hungarian , and why it isn’t as hard as you think for Czech ), because the limiting belief of a language you want to learn as being difficult will do you no good whatsoever so it’s important to do away with this from the get-go. But I don’t need to do that with Tagalog – not because it doesn’t have complex grammatical features etc. (as you’ll see below), but because Filipinos are extremely encouraging and constantly remind you how “easy” their language is. In almost every other culture I’ve been in they say – “Oh, you’re learning X? It’s such a hard language… good luck!!” It’s consistent and propagated by some more than others. Native speakers of almost every language don’t know how predictable they are being across the world as they say that to me. It’s not based on any real information (except for selective biased examples) – it just boils down to ego and pride. Filipinos seem more modest as a culture and this can only benefit the learner from a language learning perspective. This encouragement is a crucial part of how your story in progressing in the language will go.

Everybody told me right from the start that I’ll do well in this mission, whether they knew my background or not. If you take on Tagalog, Filipinos will patiently and enthusiastically listen to you as you try and constantly remind you how much you are progressing, even when you just start with pleasantries. NOT having this in other languages slows you down tremendously, whether it really has complex grammar, tones etc. or not. So if you’ve chosen to learn Tagalog, you start off on the right foot immediately just for picking a culture that will be so receptive to you trying! Filipino or Tagalog? One of the first things you should realise is that it’s simply inaccurate to think that the Philippines has one unifying language. I started my trip in the country in the city of Cebu, and Cebuano/Visayan tends to be called a “dialect”, which is interesting because they are actually more different from Tagalog and less mutually intelligible than European languages that are officially counted as separate (like Portuguese, Spanish, Italian). There and later in my travels I met Filipinos who couldn’t speak Tagalog.

They could understand it and recognise it, but several of my friends actually used their own language with people from their part of the country or English with Tagalog speakers. The Philippines has had a complicated history and one aspect of that in the last half of the 20th century was to pick the language spoken in Manila as the national language. Its invented label of “Filipino” was an attempt to bring people of the whole country together under one language. In non-Tagalog parts of the country you will see the language in advertisements and you’ll hear it on TV or in some offices, but people on the street don’t use it at all. The choice wasn’t so clear cut – there were actually technically more Visayan speakers than Tagalog ones when the decision was made, and this continues to cause frustration in Visayans. (Although even the term “Visayan” is frustrating to some). Because of this I almost never heard anyone refer to Tagalog as “Filipino”. If you don’t plan on living in a Tagalog speaking part of the country then I’d suggest that you start with the local language immediately instead. Finding a suitable place to live that used Tagalog was actually a challenge for me and slowed down my progress dramatically!

Some of the most interesting parts of the country just don’t use it. The real version of the language: Taglish! However, presuming you are living in Manila or a surrounding Tagalog region, Tagalog can be a fun language to learn! But technically, Tagalog doesn’t even exist! What you really want to know is Taglish . At first I didn’t think this term would be something I would want to take seriously as it reminds me of “Spanglish”. In the Philippines though, English has such a huge influence that you simply can’t avoid it when speaking Tagalog. It’s so important, that the language selection you see on ATMs is not English or Tagalog, but English or Taglish! An academic will find a way to invent an obscure word to replace an English equivalent, but nobody will actually use this word. In many cases locals would scratch their head and give up after asking many of their friends when I asked if there was a Tagalog translation of an English term. This is not just for expected word borrowings (which pretty much every language in the world has done too from English in recent times), but the conversation just flows in and out of English (a.k.a. code switching ).

For example, I found this amusing exchange from a lady fed up with her jealous friend: Jealous na jealous sa akin iyan pero, no reason naman. I don’t even look at her boyfriend dahil sa alam ko masyadong possessive siya. Sobrang pagka-possessive talaga. Nayayamot na ako. This is an extreme example, and I think it can be misleading how much English is used when you hang out with certain people – especially those in upper classes who prefer English or went to an English speaking school. You can get every range from just single words and set phrases in English cropping up, all the way to Englog , where someone seems to be speaking English, but has subtle Tagalog features to it that don’t make sense until you understand the basics (I especially heard the words “na” (ligature after consonants – see below), “po” (polite addition to sentences) and “ba” (question word) a lot when people would speak English to me and not even know that I was trying to learn Tagalog). I don’t think they even realise that they are doing it. They also say “only” a lot after all prices when speaking English.

Rather than being a sneaky marketing trick to make you feel it’s less than it is, this is actually a translation of use of lang in Tagalog after quantities. Since I was in the Philippines for such a short time I didn’t quite figure out a way to decide which end of the scale to aim for in the long run. I’m not a purist, perfectionist or academic so Tagalog actually doesn’t interest me at all and I feel my ideal level would be code switching with 20-50% English or thereabouts based on the types of people I hang out with. If you watch presenters on MTV Philippines for example, this is the balance they tend to reach. Obviously it has it’s advantages that you can transition yourself in slowly by throwing in a few Tagalog words as you speak English and add more and more in until you reach Taglish, rather than trying to go cold turkey and speak 100% target language from day one. This is the approach I took and it was less pressure to say everything in Tagalog, and actually sounded pretty natural and was less of a shock (coming from a white guy) than when I came out with full Tagalog phrases.

I did this so much that I started saying “po” naturally even as I spoke English! What about the Spanish vocabulary? Despite all the English (which will actually be much less when you hear particular people. Some radio I listened to seemed to only use 5% English for example), and the obvious influence from Spanish, I can’t say that it’s that easy a task to understand a typical conversation with no preparation. If you listen to Tagalog radio, even if you speak fluent Spanish, you will have a very hard time keeping up with the non-English and even getting the gist of it in most cases. I read somewhere that up to 20% of Tagalog is based on Spanish, but I feel that this would be 20% of the dictionary and most of that would be formal or technical terms that are less likely to come up in conversations. 20% of all words does not equal 20% of the content of conversations. Having said that, speaking Spanish did indeed make a huge difference. Since most Filipinos nowadays don’t actually speak any Spanish (although of course there are exceptions), they were surprised by how much vocabulary I knew or could guess.

An amusing example is when girls would shout “ guwapo ” at me when I passed by thinking I didn’t understand it (No, it wasn’t because I do indeed deserve that 2nd prize in a beauty contest I won in Monopoly; they’d do this for any white guy in his 20s without a wife!) Here’s a pretty long list of examples of Spanish words in Tagalog. Interestingly enough a lot of the -ción words sound like they are half way between Spanish and English with Tagalog’s “sy” being pronounced as “sh”, so you have Ambisyon, deklarasyon. While words are spelled differently, you will recognise many of them instantly when spoken. Changes are pretty consistent – ua goes to uwa, ñ goes to ny obviously enough, j becomes h – basically as you would expect it to be written in English based on the pronunciation. Since Tagalog doesn’t have an f sound, it’s replaced with a p. So the months of the year and days of the week have been taken from Spanish, but it’s better to say Pebrero for example. Numbers can also be used from Spanish, English or original Tagalog but it depends on context.

Tagalog numbers are for basic counting (two apples, five people), Spanish would be used for times (a las kuwatro) and English in prices. If you don’t speak Spanish, then you can still get a great head start from thousands of words like this (-syon and others) that you will recognise with no work. Native Tagalog vocabulary After getting a head start with the English you already know and the extra Spanish vocabulary, you’ll be glad to hear that native Tagalog won’t pose that much of a challenge. Good dictionaries or language books will indicate where the stress lies in each word (which might not correspond to the word it was borrowed from, e.g. puwedé), which will help a lot since they are not written over it in most native texts. Tagalog is written phonetically and as it would be pronounced in English. This is interesting as no other language I’ve come across does this. Even English fails to follow its own pronunciation rules a lot of the time. So you have w, ng at ends of words, and most other letters acting as they would in English.

The only exceptions really are sy (that acts as ‘sh’ as shown above) and dy that can act as an English ‘j’ (although that’s how I would pronounce dy myself with an Irish accent ) and ch is replaced with ts. Because Tagalog doesn’t have any major complications in consonant clusters etc. (apart from the ng sound) you won’t have problems reading it aloud (once you’ve worked on rolling your R ), and many words are short enough (in root form) that you can learn them easily enough with some clever learning techniques . You just have to make sure to pronounce vowels separately, so kain (eat) for example is ka-een. This separation of vowels as not acting as diphthongs gives the language an interesting musicality. Learning Tagalog words from scratch is no harder than learning new unfamiliar words in any European language. Interesting grammar! The good news is that Tagalog has no grammatical gender, no person or plural based conjugation, no grammatical cases like the dative and lacks many other features that could make it harder to learn.

But it does indeed have complex parts to it that make it more interesting to learn (read: interesting since there has to be differences, not “hard” unless you like being a crybaby ). The first of these are infixes (or prefixes when the word begins with a vowel). These are used to take a root verb and give it a time (past, present, future). So aral is the root, mag-aral means “to study” (or imperative study!), nag-aral is past tense studied, nag-aaral (repeated first syllable of root) is present tense study and mag-aaral is future tense. This is harder to spot and get used to when the word begins with a consonant, so kumain actually comes from kain (to eat). A nasal ligature (ng or na after consonants) crops up a LOT and is necessary to link certain words together. It can vaguely be translated as “of” but there is simply no word translated many times in English. For example, if you look at the sign I’m pointing at in the photo (something that you really can’t miss as it is outside of shops all over the country), it says “Load na dito”.

I love this phrase as it is a great example of how Tagalog/Taglish works. “Load” (pronounced as in English) actually means top-up (a.k.a. recharging or “loading” phone credit) and “dito” means here. “Na” tends to mean now/already but in this case it is a ligature with no meaning that must be na because ‘load’ ends in a consonant. So the sign simply means “top-up here”. This ligature attaches on to the end of many words in complete sentences and it takes a little bit of mental effort to remember to add it. Sometimes “Gusto ko” (I want/would like) becomes “Gusto kong” depending on the following word. Here are some other observations: There is no verb “to be”! There is a word you can use “ay” that seems like to-be (e.g. Ako ay Pilipino – I am Filipino), but this tends to be too formal for conversations and a reversed word order is preferred (Pilipino ako). “To be” is simply implied.

There are separate words for we/us depending on if the person being spoken to is included (tayo) or not (kami). I think this is really logical as one “we” leads to ambiguity in other languages in some situations. Many abstract qualities become adjectives by simply adding ma before it. So “maganda” (beautiful) comes from “ganda” – beauty and “mabilis” (fast) comes from bilis (speed). This helps a lot as you can tell immediately that a word is likely to be an adjective and try to see if you remember what the root means. Based on the above and an understanding of other prefixes and suffixes, you can extrapolate quite a lot even if you see a new word for the first time. For example, -an means a place (aklatan = library, aklat means book of course) There are almost no prepositions – “SA” is the universal one, (in, from, about etc.) and “para (sa)” for “for”. There are so many features of Tagalog that make it interesting and fun to learn, and there’s no way I can summarise all of them in a post like this.

But I hope this summary gives you a vague idea to get you started! I have to admit that good materials to learn the language have been hard to come by, but I found “ Basic Tagalog ” to actually give a pretty non-basic decent overview of the technical grammar aspects of the language. But strangely enough, most book shops only have a very old version of the book (not the same one you’ll see on Amazon). Because the one I have is old, I ignored it for vocabulary learning as I didn’t want to unnecessarily learn new words that were actually not in use with English versions being preferred. You can also find your favourite courses like Pimsleur, Lonely Planet, Teach-yourself, Assimil etc. for this language, but you should get them before travelling because some of them are quite hard to find in the country (one of the issues I had here; normally buying the material on arrival is what I do to lighten my travel load and usually never causes me any issues, not this time!) Thanks for following along and I hope you’ll enjoy the next interesting mission 😉 If you have any thoughts on Tagalog, or feel there’s anything important I missed, let us know in the comments!

Benny Lewis Cebuano - Language Information & Resources Home » Resources » Languages » Cebuano Cebuano The Cebuano language, also known as Sebuano or Sugbuhanon, is one of the most important languages in the Republic of the Philippines, along with Tagalog and Filipino. The name “Cebuano” is derived from the island of Cebu, home to one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. Classification of the Cebuano Language The Cebuano language is classified as a member of the Western or Indonesian subgroup of the Austronesian family of languages. The Austronesian language family, formerly known as the Malayo-Polynesian family, is one of the world’s largest language groups. Some linguists have classified Cebuano as a dialect of a Visayan or Bisayan language, along with the Iligaynon and Waray languages, to which it is closely related. Cebuano is only one of the estimated 70 to 75 indigenous languages that can be found throughout the islands of the Philippines.

These Philippine languages can be divided into two main categories: Central, also known as Mesophilippine; and northern, also known as Cordilleran. A number of smaller linguistic groups exist in addition to these two. Cebuano is one of the most important languages within the Central (Mesophilippine) category, alongside Tagalog and Filipino. The Cebuano People The term “Cebuano” can be used to refer to the Cebuano ethnic group found in the Philippines, as well as to their native language. The Cebuano people are believed to have originated in the area of modern-day Cebu. This area and the Cebuano people who inhabited it over the centuries came under a variety of influences over time. One such important influence was the introduction of Islam to the Philippines thanks to contact with Muslim traders from Malaysia and Indonesia around the 13th century. New influences came to Cebu and other areas of the Philippines with the introduction of American and Spanish forces in the 16th century, an event that ushered in a period of colonial influence lasting well into the 20th century.

Development of the Written Cebuano Language: Pre-Spanish Period Cebuano-language literature has evolved through a number of phases. Two early phases of note are the pre-Spanish and Spanish, which mark the transition from the pre-colonial to colonial Philippines. While there is evidence of a pre-Spanish writing system for the Cebuano language, its use appears to be sporadic. Pre-Spanish Cebuano literature therefore refers largely to the oral traditions of the Cebuano peoples that existed before the period of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. Many of these oral traditions were recorded by Spanish missionaries and later by the Cebuano peoples themselves, and a good deal of this traditional oral literature has been preserved to this day. Spanish Language Influence on Cebuano Like Tagalog, the Cebuano language was heavily influenced by the Spanish language during the period of colonialism. With the arrival of Spanish colonials, for example, a Latin-based writing system was introduced to the Cebuano language. Also, a significant number of Spanish loanwords were introduced to the Cebuano language during this time.

Literally thousands of Spanish loanwords can be found in the Cebuano language today. Another repercussion of this foreign linguistic influence was the addition of additional vowels to the Cebuano alphabet, which had originally included only three vowels. This was expanded to five vowels thanks to the introduction of Spanish words to the language. Cebuano in the Philippines Today Cebuano is spoken by an estimated 14.5 million people in the Philippines, or approximately 25 percent of the population. Although native Cebuano speakers make up one of the most significant linguistic and cultural groups in the Philippines, the official language of the country is Filipino, a standardized version of the native Tagalog language. Most linguists agree that Filipino is technically the same language as Tagalog, as the two are virtually identical. However the Philippine constitution asserts that Filipino is the country’s national language, in order to disassociate it from the Tagalog ethnic group which dominates much of the Philippines. An estimated 14 million native Tagalog speakers can be found in the Philippines, making Tagalog one of the dominant languages in the country.

Modern Cebuano Language and Dialects The majority of native Cebuano language speakers in the modern Philippines are distributed in the areas of eastern Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Mindanao, and the Camotes Islands. A variety of Cebuano dialects can be found throughout these areas, and a number of labels have been given to the diverse dialects of the Cebuano language. Cebuano speakers in Bohol refer to their language as “Bol-anon,” for example, while those in Leyte usually call their dialect “Kana.” Today Cebuano is used far more frequently as a spoken language than it is a literary language. However, a variety of Cebuano-language media, from newspapers to movies, can be found in the Philippines today, helping to ensure the language will remain relevant among the great mélange of languages to be found in the Philippines. Development of Literary Cebuano Early Cebuano-language literature was based largely on old Cebuano oral traditions. With the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines, the influence of Roman Catholic Spanish missionaries resulted in the emergence of a religious theme in Cebuano literature.

A later period of Cebuano literature, known as the American period, is highlighted by the writer Vincente Sotto, who is credited with writing the first literary short story in the Cebuano language. Sotto was an invaluable figure in the development of Cebuano literature, writing both short stories and plays, and heading the “Ang Suga” newspaper that served as an outlet for Cebuano writers in the early 20th century. The pre-war period of Cebuano literature is often seen as a sort of golden age, producing a number of well-known writers who contributed greatly to a growing body of Cebuano-language literature. Since this time, the body of Cebuano language writers has continued to grow, and a number of publishing houses can be found in Cebu today. Get Your FREE Quote Tagalog Language Tagalog is one of the Top 40 languages of the world with 24 million first-language speakers and over 65 million second-language speakers.

Tagalog is native to the countryï¿½s Katagalugan region, which is basically the country's capital Manila and its 10 adjacent provinces in the central to southern part of Luzon island plus certain parts of the islands of Marinduque and Mindoro. Tagalog, which belongs to the Austronesian vocabulary is composed mostly of words of Austronesian origin with borrowings from Spanish, Min Nan/Hokkien Chinese, Malay, Sanskrit, Arabic, Tamil, Persian, Kapampangan, languages spoken on Luzon, and others, especially other Austronesian languages. On the other hand, the ï¿½Filipino" language is the name of the official language of the Philippines, and this official language was based on Tagalog. There are many other languages spoken in the Philippines (such as Cebuano, Ilokano, Ilonggo) but when the Philippine government decided to choose an official language for the country, they chose Tagalog to form the basis for that official language (which came to be known as Filipino). The Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (the National Language Institute, now called the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino) was mandated to do this task.

It was the Surianï¿½s first director Jaime de Veyra who is credited for proposing that Tagalog be the basis for the national language. On November 13, 1936, the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa chose Tagalog to form the basis of the national language, based primarily on pervasiveness both in speech and literary work, as well as for being the language spoken of the countryï¿½s capital, Manila. The Institute then published in 1940 an official grammar and dictionary, the Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa (Grammar of the National Language) written by Lope K. Santos, and the Tagalog-English Vocabulary. That Filipino alphabet, a Latin script which now consists of 28 letters, has evolved considerably from the time of Lope K. Santos, who officially introduced a 20-letter ï¿½ABAKADAï¿½ alphabet which was then adopted by the National Language Institute in 1973--the same year when ï¿½Pilipinoï¿½ was defined by law as the national language.

The national alphabet expanded to 31 lettersï¿½the 26 letters of the English alphabet, the Spanish ï¿½, ll, rr, and ch, and the ng of Tagalogï¿½and again in 1976 to include the letters C, Ch, F, J, Ll, ï¿½, Q, Rr, V, X, and Z in order to accommodate words of Spanish and English origin. By 1987, the alphabet was then reduced to 28 letters, removing rr, ll and ch, all of which are of Spanish origin, and concurrently the name of the official language was changed from ï¿½Pilipinoï¿½ to ï¿½Filipinoï¿½. Along with this change, several "old-style" spelling rules were revamped (e.g. "Caloocan City" became ï¿½Kalookan Cityï¿½) while transliteration began to be shunned in favor of direct equivalents (e.g.

ï¿½Pamantasanï¿½ for ï¿½Universityï¿½ instead of ï¿½Unibersidadï¿½) and--as appropriate--assimilation (e.g. ï¿½computerï¿½ instead of ï¿½kompyuterï¿½ for ï¿½computerï¿½). Thus, Filipino is the mandated medium of instruction for some school subjects throughout the country--including in locations where Tagalog is not spoken (e.g. in Cebu province where Cebuano is the native language). Today, the modern Filipino language is the de facto standardized version of Tagalog, though is de jure distinct from it. Filipino is considered by Ethnologue to be a variant of Tagalog, a Central Philippine language within the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. As a result, Tagalog is highly similar to Filipino, but they are not exactly the same.

From a practical standpoint, the main difference is that Tagalog is less adaptable to change (as it has solid roots in its geographical origins wherein it is spoken in more or less unadulterated form) while Filipino is more flexible because it more openly lends itself to influences not only within the country (i.e. among non-Tagalog speakers such as those who speak Cebuano) but also outside the country (e.g. English). Thus for applications that may involve a more modern, natural and politically correct writing style--especially in localizationï¿½Filipino is more appropriate than Tagalog to achieve the mission of touching base with the Philippine market and Filipinos in general.

Question: Tagalog is a language native to which country?
Answer: PHILLIPINES