Comments, questions and suggestions for Intermediate Tagalog here, please.
Hi John, I’m happy that you have included accents in the tagalog words (it’s rare to find these in tagalog learning materials)… but since there are variations in how accents are supposed to be pronounced, can you clarify exactly how you have used them in this course? Thanks!
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Variations? Not that I know of. Mistakes, yes. But basically accents are not used by native speakers except in dictionaries, and not even there when the main stress falls on the second-to-last syllable.
I’ve marked the stressed syllable with an acute accent. Circumflexes indicate a stressed syllable with a glottal stop, always at the end of a word. A grave accent indicates an unstressed glottal where the main stress falls on the preceding syllable.
Towards the end of the course I’ve marked stresses somewhat less frequently as you should be getting used to doing without - you will have to in the real world of everyday Tagalog.
I hope this explains it.
Thanks! I was confused about how to pronounce the circumflexes and grave accent but this clarifies it now.
Hi John.
Since memrise has got rid of the useful individual course forums i shall post here regarding your verbs course. I would firstly like to thank you as i have found it very useful whilst trying to get to grips with the concept. I know this is cheeky to ask as you are not paid for your hard work on here, but here goes. Could you please, when you have time, add some info on actor focused verbs and object focused verbs and the difference between the two as i am struggling to get my head around it. I am not a language professional like yourself and neither do i possess any natural talent for it. Im just throwing myself into tagalog for my love of the country and its people, oh and my wife of course.
Kind regards
Bill
Hi Bill,
Nice to hear from you!
The verbs course is a work in progress and I will add to it when I feel confident enough for the job. I agree it’s much too short as it is.
Unfortunately my professional skills are in Finno-Ugric languages and English, not a whole lot of use with the Malayo-Polynesian family, and I have to struggle as much as anyone else with Tagalog. Anyway, I’m getting ready for my move to the Philippines in a few months, and I expect that will tip me over the event horizon towards mastering the language.
One thing I can add is that love is the best motivation you can have for learning a language. That’s what led me to a life and career in the medium of Finnish.
John
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Thanks for the swift reply. I hope the moving process goes smoothly for you. Im going to the philippines in a few days and am staying for a month. Im going to use the time to try and practice tagalog, although my wifes family are ilonggo. Im trying to get to an acceptable level with my tagalog first before i get too into any other philippine languages. How is the cebuano coming along? Do you find yourself getting confused between cebuano and tagalog due to the similarities?
You’re right about love being the best motivation, i am just a normal working class guy, no natural language talent whatsoever, i had not considered learning a language until i met my wife. I have been studying tagalog for a couple of years now, im nowhere near fluency but i will get there eventually. It gives me such a great feeling though when i have understood something being said.
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Are you attending classes? There’s only one Tagalog course in Finland and I’ve done it, not so much for the teaching (the guro’s a Finn) but more for motivation - it adds pressure to an open-ended process.
I think you’re right to concentrate on Tagalog. Confusion can set in due to the similarities between Filipino languages, but once you’re confident with one you’ll find it’s a big help. I’m just dabbling with Cebuano at this point. My idea is that the Tagalog + Cebuano combo will give me an edge pretty much anywhere in PH.
I’ve found a similar situation with Finnish and Estonian, which share about 75% of their vocabulary and practically all their grammar. It’s confusing to tackle both at elementary level but a huge help if you’re already fluent in one.
Im not taking any classes because all the ones i have found are a bit pricey. Its been self study all the way so far. I will keep that in mind though, im thinking about hiring a tutor when i get out there. I have alot of books that i haven’t really got into yet, i have mostly been using memrise and experimenting on my wife and pinoy friends. It seems that when i look at books about grammar i have a ‘brain melt’ moment. I just need to stop being afraid of the books. Its been nice to chat to you John, keep up the good work and all the best in the future.
Stick with the grammar. One day it magically makes sense and explains lots of stuff.
I recently found book 1 of the series I learned Finnish from. I was staggered at how much pain it had cost me back then, but it’s now as natural to me as English.
Ah cool. I dont even know English grammar that well to be honest. I didn’t do very well in school. I know it naturally, i can look at a peice of text and am able to tell if the grammar is incorrect and rewrite it correctly, but wouldn’t be able to say why. I was hoping that i would just be able to do that with Tagalog, but i realise when thinking about it that its something that would only happen if i lived in the philippines for about ten years. I think that I just have to get past the fear of doing something difficult. Brain melting is bound to happen with such a difficult language as Tagalog. Where are you from originally? I had just assumed that you were Finnish (from the name). I’m from Horsham, West Sussex.
And I will keep striving towards fluency with Tagalog, I would say that I’m currently an advanced beginner. I can understand most things if people talk to me really slowly, like I’m a baby. I can make my needs and wants known, ask for directions, count (thanks to your numbers course), all that sort of thing. But i can only pick out the odd word when people speak at a normal rate. I’m going to be spending most of my time in an ilonggo speaking town with my wifes ilonggo speaking family, but they also speak tagalog so i will try to get them to speak it with me, I’m also going to spend as much time as possible consuming Tagalog media content. Memrise has been a massive help for me to build the vocabulary but its also very distracting, i find that i spend far too much time using memrise when it would probably help me to pick up one of my books. But its also going to be helpful that the internet in my wifes town is virtually non-existent.
One thing that’s good (sort of) about Tagalog is they don’t care at all about grammar. I get the impression that they learn basic English grammar but leave their native language to fend for itself. Also, a lot of Tagalog speakers have another Filipino language as their mother tongue and that tends to make the practical language lax. And as you know, they happily incorporate chunks of English or whatever. I reckon a score averaging 80 to 90% on Memrise will be understood, assuming the rest isn’t total rubbish. This is a feasible target to go for.
It’ll help with your book learning if you make word lists and put them on Memrise. That’s what I’ve done with my Finnish-Tagalog courses and now with Estonian (new girlfriend - hoping for a Swedish speaker next). Tackling both grammar and vocabulary at the same time divides your forces, better to nail the vocab first.
I’m a Brit by birth, now dual national, having lived most of my life in Finland. I grew up in Margate. When I came to Finland my entire foreign language experience consisted of a rusty O-level in French, so I don’t believe your past experience is any handicap.
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Cheers for the advice John, its been cool to chat to you. All the best mate.
Oh another question for you, if SWIM (someone who isn’t me) was to lift a load of phrases from a phrasebook and put them in a memrise course, would SWIM be risking being banned? Is it acceptable for SWIM to lift prases but just change some of the words around?
If you don’t mention the name of the book, I can’t see how you wouldn’t be in the clear. There are actually some courses on Memrises that specify the book that the material is derived from, even using the book cover as the illustration. Seems dodgy in terms of copyright but they’re out there.
By the way, what book are you using? I’ve ploughed through Elementary Tagalog (Tuttle) and found it OK.
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i have living language, spoken world tagalog. Have only dipped into it so far as i have been just using memrise so much. Was thinking about possibly making an ilonggo phrases course at some point when i get round to it as there isn’t one on here yet.
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Drop me a note if you post a Tagalog course, I’d be interested to take a look.
I suppose there isn’t a lot of choice in learning materials for Ilonggo. I’ve looked into Bicol but the situation’s pretty much hopeless there - no standard language, every village has its own dialect.
Cheers mate, will do. I think i own the only ilonggo phrasebook in print that isn’t for missionaries. Haha. Ingat po.