Tagalog World | Mundo Ng Tagalog

[Daniel]

Just thought I'd start creating lessons about the Tagalog language, the language that I can speak QUITE well with my mother and my cousin. It is my mother's native tongue alongside Bikol (Philippine regional language) but she's forgotten it now.

Tagalog belongs to the same family (Malayo-Polynesian) as Malay and Indonesian so they are related. But it shows many influences from Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and, more recently, English.

Tagalog at basic level is very easy. Like Malay, it employs the use of suffixes to make the language work. It uses agglutination. It also uses particle markers to show the relationship between words in a sentence.

OK, let's move on to the Tagalog pronunciation.

The pronunciation in Tagalog is very easy. It has only FOUR pure vowels of which are a, i, o and u. The letter e also exists but is only found mainly in loanwords (mainly English and Spanish). The consonants are treated consistently in that they only have one sound each, most notably the g should always be pronounced as the hard g, never soft. The h on the other hand should be like the English h.

Tagalog usually stresses the last syllable. It also uses glottal stop. The glottal stop can also be stressed. The diacritical marks will be used to show which vowel should be stressed and which vowel should be accompanied with the glottal stop and which should be the combination of both the stress and the glottal stop.

à - unstressed glottal stop (the syllable that comes before this accented vowel must always be stressed)
á - stressed
â - stressed glottal stop

This is very important because the meaning of a word can be changed if you don't make the stress or glottal stop correctly.

suka - vomit
sukà - vinegar

kaibígan - friend
kaibigán - desire
kaíbigan - sweetheart
káibigán - mutual consent

makaalís - to be able to leave
makáalis - to leave unintentionally

bága - live charcoal
bagà - lungs

[Daniel]

TAGALOG LESSON ONE

Word Order

The word order in Tagalog is different in comparison to English and many other European languages. It is rather simple. For example, in English we say "The house is beautiful." which is translated into Tagalog as "Magandá ang báhay." which literally means "Beautiful the house."

As you notice, the verb 'to be' does not exist in this sense. Ang is a particle marker used to mark the following noun as the topic of the sentence.

Adjectives

The Tagalog word for 'beautiful' is magandá. In Tagalog, almost every adjective starts with ma-. This is because ma- is in fact the suffix used to turn the noun into adjective. Thus the root word gandá is the noun meaning 'beauty'.

Vocabulary:

babáe - woman
laláki - man
álak - wine
isdâ - fish
kapé - coffee
amá - father
ílog - river
bulaklák - flower

masaráp - delicious
magandá - beautiful
malamíg - cold
mayáman - rich
mahál - expensive
mabangó - fragrant
masayá - happy
malayò - far

EXERCISE 1: Read and translate into English:

1) Masaráp ang isdâ.
2) Magandá ang babáe.
3) Mayáman ang laláki.
4) Malayò ang ílog.
5) Masayá ang amá.
6) Mabangó ang bulaklák.
7) Mahál ang álak.
8 ) Malamíg ang kapé.

[Daniel]

TAGALOG LESSON TWO

Personal Pronouns:

akó - I
ikáw, ka, kayó - you (informal)
siyá - he, she
táyo - we (including the listener)
kamí - we (excluding the listener)
kayó - you (formal, polite)
silá - they

You have noticed that there are three words for the informal 'you'. The difference is that ikáw can only be used at the beginning of a sentence whereas ka is only used in the middle or at the end of the sentence, or in inverted word order sentence. And informal kayó is the plural form of ikáw/ka.

And here are the possessive pronouns:

ko - my
mo, ninyó - your (informal)
niyá - his, her
natin - our (including the listener)
namin - our (excluding the listener)
ninyó - your (formal, polite)
nilá - their

Vocabulary:

maliít - small
matalíno - intelligent
matabâ - fat
malî - wrong
tamà - right
mabúti - good
gurò - teacher
mánunulát - writer
sáyantist - scientist
péro / nguni't - but
iná - mother
at - and
peryodista - journalist
malungkót - sad
yamót - bored
antók - sleepy

EXERCISE 2: Read and translate into English:

1) Matabâ silá.
2) Malî ka.
3) Mánunulát siyá.
4) Peryodista ang amá ko at sáyantist ang iná ko.
5) Matalíno kamí nguni't matabâ kayó.
6) Antók táyo.
7) Malungkót ang gurò ko.
8 ) Yamót silá nguni't mabúti akó.

Now for useful greetings!

Magandáng umága - Good morning
Magandáng tanghalì - Good day
Magandáng hápon - Good afternoon
Magandáng gabí - Good night
Paalám na - Goodbye
(Maráming) salamat - Thank you (very much)
Waláng anumán - You're welcome/Don't mention it
Iskyús - Excuse me.
Sori - Sorry.
Kumustá (pô) kayó? - How are you? (polite, plural) * pô is there to make it more polite
Kumustá! - Hi!
Kumustá ka? - How are you? (informal)

To make your "Magandáng umága", etc. more polite, add "pô" at the end.

---

Daniel

[fuadj]

Hi! Kumusta! Magiliw sa makita a tagalog banta dito!(Ay ito iwasto?) I'm very interested in Tagalog as it stems from the same family as Malay, and could be called brother (or sister) tongues. Many of the words here I can understand such as Lalaki, or Lelaki in Malay, Alak, or Arak, and Mahal, same in Malay. Can you understand this: Kebanyakkan perkataan Tagalog seakan-akan dengan Bahasa Melayu?

Answers:

1) Masaráp ang isdá. - The fish is delicious.
2) Magandá ang babae. - The woman is beautiful
3) Mayaman ang lalakí. - The man is rich
4) Malayò ang ilog. - The river is ?long?,?far?
5) Masayá ang amá. - The father is happy
6) Mabangó ang bulaklák. - The flower is fragrant
7) Mahál ang alak. - The wine is expensive
8 ) Malamíg ang kapé. - The coffee is cold

[stifven]

Im very glad to see this page! Thanks Danny.

Danny... I think sayantist (for scientist) is Filipino. The Tagalog term for scientist is "siyentipiko" or "taong-agham"(obsolete).

*The word BUT is better translated as "Ngunit", however, "Pero" is more commonly used especially in conversations.

hehe... What's "Antok tayo."? Sounds cute.

Fuadj: Nice to see you here! Hey, what did u mean by "Kebanyakkan perkataan Tagalog seakan-akan dengan Bahasa Melayu?" I only know "Tagalog" and "Bahasa Melayu." lol

[Daniel]

Hey you two, Stifven and fuadj! Nice to see you here!

Stifven: ah thanks for pointing them out for me! Antok tayo is supposed to mean "we are sleepy". Tagalog has so many words for one thing. Not surprising though cos when once I said to my mother "Madilim ang silid!" (The room is dark!) She didn't understand the word "silid" as she usually only knows the word "kuwarto" which generally means the same thing!

Fuadj: guess what? I'm also learning Malay from your course!! I'm interested in it mainly because of its linguistical relation to Tagalog.

Daniel

[Daniel]

By the way, fuadj, your answers to the exercise one are all correct. But malayo ang ilog does mean 'the river is far'.

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Now for the next lesson!

TAGALOG LESSON THREE

Verbs

The verbs are probably the most complicated and difficult aspect of Tagalog to explain to non-Tagalog speakers. They work very differently from English ones obviously. There are only three tenses which are past, present and future. The tenses of Tagalog verbs are only concerned with whether something happened, happens or will happen.

Since Tagalog uses agglutination, the verb is made up of the verb root and an appropriate affix. An affix can be added to the beginning (prefix), the middle (infix) or at the end (suffix) in order to change the meaning of the word and use in a sentence.

Look at this verb kumain which is the infinitive meaning 'to eat'. Its verb root is kain.

The infix -um- is added to the root kain to turn it into the infinitive. This is done by adding the infix after the first consonantal letter.

Tagalog uses reduplication which is the process of repeating the syllable in order to convey its tense.

So to turn kain into the present tense, repeat the first syllable to get kakain, then add the infix -um- after the first consonantal letter and you get kumakain which is the present meaning 'eat/eats'. Note that the present can also be continuous present.

step 1: kain
step 2: kakain [repeat initial syllable]
step 3: kumákain [add infix after initial consonant]

In Tagalog, the verb always comes first then the personal pronoun.

Now how do you say 'I eat/I am eating'?

For past tense, simply use the infinitive kumain. Kumain is both the infinitive and the past tense.

How would you translate 'He ate/He was eating'?

In order to obtain the future, use the root verb and then simply repeat the initial syllable.

step 1: kain
step 2: kakain [repeat initial syllable]

How is 'They will eat/They will be eating'? said in Tagalog?

Summary:

VERB ROOT: kain
INFINITIVE: kumain
PAST: kumain
PRESENT: kumákain
FUTURE: kakain

If the initial letter of the verb root is a vowel, for example alís (leave, depart, go away), the infix -um- becomes a prefix. That means that um- is attached at the beginning. So it's umalís - to leave, to depart, to go away.

VERB ROOT: alís
INFINITIVE: umalís
PAST: umalís
PRESENT: umáalís
FUTURE: áalís

IMPORTANT NOTE: The double vowels are pronounced separately. For example áalís is pronounced as 'á-alís'. This is why reduplication of the vowel, in a string of vowels, that is considered as a syllable occurs.

EXERCISE 3: Can you do the infinitive, past, present and future of these following verbs?

1) bilí (buy)
2) uwî (go home)
3) inóm (drink)
4) gawâ (do, make)
5) basa (read)

[stifven]

We are sleepy. = Inaantok tayo.

I never heard somebody said "Antok tayo." hehe. Although sometimes I hear people utter informally "Antok ako/ka/kayo/siya/sila." but never with tayo. Still, it's proper to say "Inaantok ako/ka..etc."

The thing about Tagalog that I hate is that suffixes magically appear in a word....and I dont know why.

[fuadj]

Well, 'Kebanyakkan perkataan Tagalog seakan-akan dengan Bahasa Melayu' means many words in Tagalog are the same in Malay.

[灰鹰(Gray Eagle)]

Kumusta ka!
What's up with this course, is it closed?:)
Nobody wants to join it?
真遗憾。。。It's a pitty...

[fuadj]

Hi Gray Eagle! Nice to see you here with me. I want to learn Tagalog again.

[灰鹰(Gray Eagle)]

Hi Gray Eagle! Nice to see you here with me. I want to learn Tagalog again.

Me too! Since I found that it's very similar with Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia and has a lot of common words, I think that it's much easier to learbn this two languages at the same time.

[stifven]

Hello Fuadj and Grey Eagle! Kumusta kayo? Ikinagagalak ko kayong makita dito!

Danny and I are very willing to help you learn Tagalog! Danny is the pro when it comes to grammar.

Yes, Tagalog and Bahasa share the same family. But let me tell u that Tagalog grammar can be complicated compared to Bahasa, and Im still in search of a similar verb between Tagalog and Bahasa.

So far, Tahan is the only verb we have in common.
Tahan (Bahasa) - stop
Tahan (Tagalog) - calm down

Just post any questions and Danny/I would try our best to answer.

[灰鹰(Gray Eagle)]

Eh! Aren't u going to make some lessons please ? It's simplier like this:).
Fuadj, apakah kamu belajar Tagalog sendiri? Ada buku atau guru?

[Daniel]

Eh! Aren't u going to make some lessons please ? It's simplier like this:).
Fuadj, apakah kamu belajar Tagalog sendiri? Ada buku atau guru?

Does this word guru mean 'teacher'? If so, the Tagalog word for it is guro.

It's a Sanskrit origin!

By the way, I completely forgot about this course!! It's because it was on 2nd page so I forgot about that!! Shame on me!!!