(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:
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