The longest entry I have here

(Psst. If you just want to use this post as a list of resources, just skip all that reading and go to the bottom of the post. There's a bunch of links there that you can use. You're welcome. :D )

Wow, I have really slacked off on these blog posts. Oops. Sorry about that. But while I wasn't posting, I learned a lot of great things, both about Tagalog and how to study a language. For now, I'll just be explaining what new strategies I have for learning a foreign language. It's pretty messy and disorganized, but it helps! I promise.

First off, I've been using this app called L-lingo every since I started learning Tagalog. And even though the lessons they provide help me to get a good grasp of the language, they don't go too in depth about the reasons behind certain things. For example, one of the example "sentences" they had was "Ang pato nasa lawa." At first, I assumed that it was a full sentence meaning "the duck is in the lake", but I was still confused on the absence of "ay" (the Tagalog equivalent to "is"). I typed down the sentence and my question in my phone's notes app, and later asked my dad about it. He told me that it actually isn a full sentence because "ay" isn't a part of it. It actually means "the duck in the lake" which is just a phrase. (Well, I hope it's a phrase. Or  something like that.) anyway, I learned a lot from this, so I continued to write questions for a whole bunch of other lessons. Pretty soon, I had a whole page just filled with a bunch of examples and the questions that I had for them, and I started to ask people around me what they knew. My family's been a great help with it. Asking or texting them questions like this helps me to understand a lot more of the language, and it gives me an opportunity to practice writing and speaking. So remember to always ask questions. (Even the stupid ones. They help you get smarterer. :P )

Second, I got a book called Conversational Tagalog and I've been taking a ton of written notes on that. It's more of a workbook than a textbook actually. The lessons they have there don't take up that much of the book. A lot of it is just occupied by examples and drills for a classroom. It's still a good resource though. It's helped a lot in grammar and vocabulary, and it makes me ask more questions. (Stupid/smarterer questions.) And taking written notes instead of typing them down has helped too. I heard that if you write something down, you're most likely going to remember it as opposed to typing it into a computer. It'd be great if that would work, but if it doesn't, at least my notes are a lot more accessible.

And finally, I actually tried having a Tagalog conversation today. I've already been saying a few bits and pieces to my parents and grandmother, but it doesn't help much with my confidence. It makes things a little bit more awkward really since I become so self-conscience of my pronunciation and wording. But hey, it's still practice. I tried to take things a step further by talking to my great-grandmother who doesn't speak a lot of English. There really isn't much of a choice but to speak Tagalog with her, so I thought it would be a good idea. To tell you the truth, it was a bit of an accomplishment but a bit humiliating at the same time. I was still a bit nervous with my pronunciation and wording, so I rehearsed what I was going to say before the conversation even started. I know. It's sad that I have to rehearse conversations, but what am I going to do about it? (I'm a language noob). I got my workbook out, found a word I had trouble pronouncing, and asked her, "Paano mo sasabihin ito sa Tagalog?" And that means "how do you say this in Tagalog?" (Or I hope it meant that.) Of course, the Tagalog word had an English translation next to it, and she just went on to say that. But I wanted her to know that I was struggling with actually saying it. So I just said, "kasi hindi ko alam uh ... How to say." Yeah. So stupid. All I had to do was repeat my first sentence, but I failed at that. Guh. (Such a noob.) But anyway, she helped me to pronounce it correctly and was really happy that I'm learning Tagalog. I think that conversations between us will be happening more often, so that's a really good thing.

Wow. That was a really long entry. Maybe the longest one I've written so far. I'll write a bunch more later on to explain what I learned from the past few days. Hopefully those'll be of some help, but for now, here's a lot of other useful resources that I've used to learn Tagalog:

• Tagalog Lang (mostly for vocabulary)
• Learning Tagalog (for grammar)
• Tagalog dictionary
• Verbs and conjugations list
• Adjectives list
• Number systems
• All Things Tagalog! (YouTube channel)

I CAN COUNT MWAHAHAHA

Hey howdy hey. (Super great way to start an entry.) So if you read the title, I'm pretty sure you can guess what this entry is about. (Hopefully your comprehension skills are decent.) Before I made this entry, I could count to, like, twelve in Tagalog.

I know. So fun, right? I got mad language skills. But even then I was so confused.

Apparently, Tagalog has two number systems. Of course, the one that's used most is entirely in Tagalog, and is used for counting, telling the date, and telling time (in certain situations). Here's a little table to help you memorize it:

zero	wala
one	isa
two	dalawa
three	tatlo
four	apat
five	lima
six	anim
seven	pito
eight	walo
nine	siyam
ten	sampu
eleven	labing-isa
twelve	labing-dalawa
thirteen	labing-tatlo
twenty	dalawampu
twenty-one	dalawampu’t isa
thirty	tatlumpu
thirty-one	tatlumpu’t isa
forty	apatnapu
forty-one	apatnapu’t isa
fifty	limampu
fifty-one	limampu’t isa
sixty	animnapu
sixty-one	animnapu’t isa
seventy	pitumpu
seventy-one	pitumpu’t isa
eighty	walumpu
eighty-one	walumpu’t isa
ninety	siyamnapu
ninety-one	siyamnapu’t isa
one hundred	isang daan

I lied the table actually wasn't that little. Oops.

The other system borrows a lot of numbers from Spanish, but most of them are spelled differently. Look at the spolling. Just look at it.

zero	sero
one	uno
two	dos
three	tres
four	kwatro
five	sinko
six	sais
seven	siyete
eight	otso
nine	nuwebe
ten	diyes
eleven	onse
twelve	dose
thirteen	trese
twenty	beynte
twenty-one	beynteuno
thirty	trenta
thirty-one	trentauno
forty	kwarenta
forty-one	kwarentauno
fifty	singkwenta
fifty-one	singkwentauno
sixty	seisenta
sixty-one	seisentauno
seventy	setenta
seventy-one	setentauno
eighty	otsenta
eighty-one	otsentauno
ninety	nobenta
ninety-one	nobentauno
one hundred	siyento

So, now then I found myself getting lost between three number systems: the Tagalog system, the Taglalog/Spanish system, and the Spanish system. It just makes counting really awkward for me. I have to take ten-second-long pauses between numbers to make sure that I'm not about to mess with my "mad language skills."

Guh. Why, Tagalog, why?

Anyway, I'm getting a lot better now. I can count to one hundred since I've been using this Tagalog-teaching app and numbers from this link: http://www.omniglot.com/language/numbers/tagalog.htm. Although I still have those really awkward pauses. I guess that I'll just keep on practicing it and maybe do some counting everyday to get used to it.

I learned how to call people "ugly" in Tagalog

Hi, there! Just as a little note, I wanted to say that this is a rewritten version of this entry. I wrote the first one when I was half asleep, and it was just ew... So that's why I'm giving this more thorough version that covers what I learned yesterday and today.

So yesterday, I learned more about making comparisons when describing appearances and landscapes. To make a comparison in Tagalog, make sure to use the words "mas" and "kaysa." The way that Tagalog uses "mas" is pretty much just like Spanish. It's just used to say that something is more than something else. And the word "kaysa" helps to complete that phrase by acting as the word "than." So all that you have to do is follow this structure:

"Ang" + subject + "ay mas" + adjective + "kaysa sa" + object.

So if I wanted to say something like "the girl is uglier than the dog", I could say something like "ang babae ay mas pangit kaysa sa aso."

Or if I wanted to say, "The man is fatter than the cow", I'd say, "Ang lalaki ay mas mataba kaysa sa baka." Pretty nice, right?

You could even take it a step further by using the superlative. (That just means saying that something is the most out of a group.) To use the superlative in Tagalog, use the word "pinaka" which means "the most." Attach it to the beginning of an adjective and follow your basic sentence structure. For example, if I wanted to say "the little boy is the smallest in the class", I'd say, "Ang batang lalaki ay pinakamaliit na nasa klase."

So, yeah. That's all that I really have to say for this entry. It's a pretty easy thing to remember, so all that I have to do from now is expand my vocabulary and use different adjectives. That's going to be such a pain to memorize, isn't it? Oh well. If any of you lonely Internet people ever want to spend your time memorizing a bunch of vocabulary, here's a link to a list: http://mylanguages.org/filipino_adjectives.php. Have fun...or something.

I can never buy things in the Philippines

So, I learned more about Tagalog phrases to say when you're buying things, and I have to say that I am at least 30% more confused than I originally was. It's not really the vocabulary that's bothering me because that's sort of easy. The only problem is that the word "bayad" sounds like "buy" but means "pay." And the word "bili" sounds like "bill" but means "buy." And apparently "buo" means "bill" (as in dollar bills), but so does "dolyar." And using "dolyar" makes more sense to me because I read that "buo" also means "entire" and I don't know how to feel about that when it's used to describe money. I just...what?

And no. This isn't even the thing I'm most confused on what I'm concerned with is how I'm starting to confuse my articles. I don't know when to use "ng" or "ang." Like in the sentence "makakabayad ba ako gamit ang credit kard", I confuse the "ang" article with "ng" and I really don't know why. I guess that I'm just so used to joining it to the end of so many words that it's sort of become automatic for me. I'll have to study that a lot more soon.

Yeah, I need to make a lot more progress, but in other news, I now know how to describe basic body parts in Tagalog! Yeah! Yeah. Hah... It's not much of an accomplishment, but you know. It's something.

My first encounter with Tagalog verbs (aka Pain)

Hello, there! Welcome to a somewhat more cohesive and purposeful entry for my Genius project! Last time that I made an entry, I had almost no idea what my project was going to be about. But a few days later, I decided that I wanted to learn Tagalog to better communicate with my Tagalog-speaking relatives.I know that one of them has a pretty tough time speaking in English, and I assume that the rest would prefer to speak in their native language, so I'm just giving it a shot and seeing where it all goes.

Over the past few months, I've made some progress. I bought this Tagalog-learning app that has, like, 105 lessons on it; took tons of notes on Tagalog grammar; made study sets on Quizlet; and made two videos that documented my progress and pronunciation. Still, I'm not happy with the way that I've been keeping track of what I've learned. I found that I tend to forget everything the next day, so starting from now, I'm going to make daily entries on Blogger to use as future reference. Plus, if anyone else is interested in learning Tagalog or just wants to see my failure, I'm sure this'll be of some use to you.

Anyway, one of the first things that I learned about was Tagalog verbs. I wanted to understand the different conjugations and tenses, so I went online and found a lot of resources for it. All of them told me that Tagalog verbs don't need to be conjugated to fit the subjects, but should still fit the verb tense. So for example, if I said something like "I/you/he/she/they/we walk", all of that would be correct. I just have to change the word "walk" to fit past, present, or future tense.

So when I read that, I was like, "Oh, okay. This'll be super easy." But hahahahahaha. No.

Apparently, there are four different types of verbs in Tagalog which could also be separated into two separate groups. The first group is called Actor Focus Verbs, and are made up of -mag and -um verbs. The second is called Object Focus Verbs, and are made up of -in and -i verbs. These two groups follow different sentence structures, and each of their verb types follow different conjugations. (You can find out what type a verb is by looking at its infinitive form.)

Actor Focus Verbs follow this structure:


And have their verbs conjugated in this way:





And Object Focus verbs follow this structure:


And have their verbs conjugated in this way:





Okay, okay. Still not that complicated so far, right? All you got to do is look at the infinitive form to find out which verb type something is, conjugate it accordingly, and place it in the right structure, right? Hahahahahaahahahahahahhaaaa. No.

The infinitive isn't listed as the most basic form of  the verb in most online resources. Instead, they list the root of the verb which really give you no clue on what the infinitive form/verb type is. So if you have to guess that, you'll have to guess the conjugation, and you'll most likely get it wrong. The only advice that I've gotten so far is to just memorize it all as I go along.

Yeah. Tagalog hurts.

Here's the source of all those pretty little diagrams: All Things Tagalog! There's a whole series on conjugating verbs, so that'll be helpful for anyone who'd like to share my pain.