Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Language
English is widely spoken in the Philippines, a legacy of the country's time
under US rule. Most everyday transactions - checking into a hotel, ordering a
meal, buying a ferry ticket - can be carried out in English, and most people
working in tourism speak it reasonably well. Even off the beaten track, many
Filipinos understand enough to help with basics such as accommodation
and directions. However, it's worth learning a few words of Tagalog, the
o
cial language of the islands. You will be a source of amusement if you try,
even though the response will most likely come in English. Tagalog has
assimilated many Spanish words, such as
mesa
(table) and
cuarto
(bedroom,
written
in Tagalog), though few Filipinos can speak Spanish today.
Cebuano (or “Visayan”) spoken in the south of the archipelago uses even
more Spanish - including all the numbers. This section focuses on Tagalog;
Cebuano is covered in the Visayas chapter (see box, p.266).
kuwarto
Tagalog
Tagalog
, also known as Filipino or Pilipino, is spoken as a first language by seventeen
million people mostly on Luzon and was made the o
cial language in 1947. The
structure of Tagalog is simple, though the
word order
is different from English; as an
example, take “
kumain ng mangga ang bata
”, which literally translates as “ate a mango
the child”. Another key difference between the two languages is the lack of the verb “to
be” in Tagalog, which means a simple sentence such as “the woman is kind” is rendered
mabait ang babae
, literally “kind the woman”. For
plurals
, the word
mga
is used
- hence
bahay
/
mga bahay
for house/houses - although in many cases Filipinos simply
state the actual number of objects or use
marami
(several) before the noun.
Consonants and vowels
Tagalog sounds staccato to the foreign ear, with clipped vowels and
consonants
. he
p
,
t
and
k
sounds are never aspirated and sound a little gentler than in English. The
g
is
always hard, as in
g
et. The letter
c
seldom crops up in Tagalog and where it does - in
names such as Boracay and Bulacan, for example - it's pronounced like
k
. he hardest
sound to master for most beginners is the
ng
sound as in the English word “si
ng
i
ng
”
(with the
g
gently nasalized, not hard); in Tagalog this sound can occur at the
TAGLISH: FILIPINO ENGLISH
Educated Filipinos move seamlessly between English and Tagalog, often in the space of the
same sentence, and many English words have been adopted by Filipinos, giving rise to a small
canon of patois known affectionately as
Taglish
. Many of these peculiarities stem from the
habit of translating something literally from Tagalog, resulting in Filipinos “closing” or “opening”
the light, or “getting down” from a taxi. Among those who don't speak English so well, an
inability to pronounce the f-sound is common, simply because it doesn't exist in any Philippine
tongue. Filipinos are well aware of this trait and often make self-deprecating jokes about it,
referring to forks as porks and vice versa. Other ear-catching Taglish phrases include “I'll be the
one to” - as in “I'll be the one to buy lunch” instead of “I'll buy lunch” - and “for a while”, meaning
“wait a moment” or “hang on”.
