Tagalog language
Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority. Its standardized form, officially named Filipino, is the national language of the Philippines, and is one of two official languages alongside English.
Tagalog is closely related to other Philippine languages, such as the Bikol languages, Ilocano, the Visayan languages, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan, and more distantly to other Austronesian languages, such as the Formosan languages of Taiwan, Malay, Hawaiian, Māori, and Malagasy.
History
The word Tagalog is derived from the endonym taga-ilog, composed of tagá- and ilog. Linguists such as Dr. David Zorc and Dr. Robert Blust speculate that the Tagalogs and other Central Philippine ethno-linguistic groups originated in Northeastern Mindanao or the Eastern Visayas.Possible words of Old Tagalog origin are attested in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription from the tenth century, which is largely written in Old Malay. The first known complete book to be written in Tagalog is the Doctrina Christiana, printed in 1593. The Doctrina was written in Spanish and two transcriptions of Tagalog; one in the ancient, then-current Baybayin script and the other in an early Spanish attempt at a Latin orthography for the language.
Throughout the 333 years of Spanish rule, various grammars and dictionaries were written by Spanish clergymen. In 1610, the Dominican priest Francisco Blancas de San Jose published the "Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala" in Bataan. In 1613, the Franciscan priest Pedro de San Buenaventura published the first Tagalog dictionary, his "Vocabulario de la lengua tagala" in Pila, Laguna.
The first substantial dictionary of the Tagalog language was written by the Czech Jesuit missionary Pablo Clain in the beginning of the 18th century. Clain spoke Tagalog and used it actively in several of his books. He prepared the dictionary, which he later passed over to Francisco Jansens and José Hernandez. Further compilation of his substantial work was prepared by P. Juan de Noceda and P. Pedro de Sanlucar and published as Vocabulario de la lengua tagala in Manila in 1754 and then repeatedly reedited, with the last edition being in 2013 in Manila.
Among others, Arte de la lengua tagala y manual tagalog para la administración de los Santos Sacramentos in addition to early studies of the language.
The indigenous poet Francisco Baltazar is regarded as the foremost Tagalog writer, his most notable work being the early 19th-century epic Florante at Laura.
Historical changes
Tagalog differs from its Central Philippine counterparts with its treatment of the Proto-Philippine schwa vowel. In most Bikol and Visayan languages, this sound merged with and. In Tagalog, it has merged with. For example, Proto-Philippine is Tagalog dikít and Visayan & Bikol dukot.Proto-Philippine,, and merged with but is between vowels. Proto-Philippine and became Tagalog ngalan and halík.
Proto-Philippine merged with. and became Tagalog tubig and dugô.
Official status
Tagalog was declared the official language by the first revolutionary constitution in the Philippines, the in 1897.In 1935, the Philippine constitution designated English and Spanish as official languages, but mandated the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages. After study and deliberation, the National Language Institute, a committee composed of seven members who represented various regions in the Philippines, chose Tagalog as the basis for the evolution and adoption of the national language of the Philippines. President Manuel L. Quezon then, on December 30, 1937, proclaimed the selection of the Tagalog language to be used as the basis for the evolution and adoption of the national language of the Philippines. In 1939, President Quezon renamed the proposed Tagalog-based national language as Wikang Pambansâ. Under the Japanese puppet government during World War II, Tagalog as a national language was strongly promoted; the 1943 Constitution specifying: The government shall take steps toward the development and propagation of Tagalog as the national language.".
In 1959, the language was further renamed as "Pilipino". Along with English, the national language has had official status under the 1973 constitution and the present 1987 constitution.
Controversy
The adoption of Tagalog in 1937 as basis for a national language is not without its own controversies. Instead of specifying Tagalog, the national language was designated as Wikang Pambansâ in 1939. Twenty years later, in 1959, it was renamed by then Secretary of Education, José Romero, as Pilipino to give it a national rather than ethnic label and connotation. The changing of the name did not, however, result in acceptance among non-Tagalogs, especially Cebuanos who had not accepted the selection.The national language issue was revived once more during the 1971 Constitutional Convention. The majority of the delegates were even in favor of scrapping the idea of a "national language" altogether. A compromise solution was worked out—a "universalist" approach to the national language, to be called Filipino rather than Pilipino. The 1973 constitution makes no mention of Tagalog. When a new constitution was drawn up in 1987, it named Filipino as the national language. The constitution specified that as the Filipino language evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages. However, more than two decades after the institution of the "universalist" approach, there seems to be little if any difference between Tagalog and Filipino.
Many of the older generation in the Philippines feel that the replacement of English by Tagalog in the popular visual media has had dire economic effects regarding the competitiveness of the Philippines in trade and overseas remittances.
Use in education
Upon the issuance of Executive Order No. 134, Tagalog was declared as basis of the National Language. On 12 April 1940, Executive No. 263 was issued ordering the teaching of the national language in all public and private schools in the country.Article XIV, Section 6 of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines specifies, in part:
Under Section 7, however:
In 2009, the Department of Education promulgated an order institutionalizing a system of mother-tongue based multilingual education, wherein instruction is conducted primarily in a student's mother tongue until at least grade three, with additional languages such as Filipino and English being introduced as separate subjects no earlier than grade two. In secondary school, Filipino and English become the primary languages of instruction, with the learner's first language taking on an auxiliary role. After pilot tests in selected schools, the MLE program was implemented nationwide from School Year 2012–2013.
Tagalog is the first language of a quarter of the population of the Philippines and the second language for the majority.
Geographic distribution
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, as of 2014 there were 100 million people living in the Philippines, where the vast majority have some basic level of understanding of the language. The Tagalog homeland, Katagalugan, covers roughly much of the central to southern parts of the island of Luzon—particularly in Aurora, Bataan, Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Metro Manila, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, Rizal, and Zambales. Tagalog is also spoken natively by inhabitants living on the islands of Marinduque and Mindoro, as well as Palawan to a lesser extent. Significant minorities are found in the other Central Luzon provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac, Ambos Camarines in Bicol Region, and the Cordillera city of Baguio. Tagalog is also the predominant language of Cotabato City in Mindanao, making it the only place outside of Luzon with a native Tagalog speaking majority.At the 2000 Philippines Census, it is spoken by approximately 57.3 million Filipinos, 96% of the household population who were able to attend school; slightly over 22 million, or 28% of the total Philippine population, speak it as a native language.
The following regions and provinces of the Philippines are majority Tagalog-speaking :
- Central Luzon Region
- * Aurora
- * Bataan
- * Bulacan
- * Nueva Ecija
- * Zambales
- Metro Manila
- Southern Luzon
- * Batangas
- * Cavite
- * Laguna
- * Rizal
- * Quezon
- * Marinduque
- * Occidental Mindoro
- * Oriental Mindoro
- * Romblon
- * Palawan
- Bicol Region
- * Camarines Norte
- * Camarines Sur
- Bangsamoro
- * Maguindanao
Tagalog also serves as the common language among Overseas Filipinos, though its use overseas is usually limited to communication between Filipino ethnic groups. The largest concentration of Tagalog speakers outside the Philippines is found in the United States, where in 2013, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that it was the fourth most-spoken non-English language at home with almost 1.6 million speakers, behind Spanish, French, and Chinese. In urban areas, Tagalog ranked as the third most spoken non-English language, behind Spanish and Chinese varieties but ahead of French. Other countries with significant concentrations of overseas Filipinos and Tagalog speakers include Saudi Arabia, Canada, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Malaysia.
Classification
Tagalog is a Central Philippine language within the Austronesian language family. Being Malayo-Polynesian, it is related to other Austronesian languages, such as Malagasy, Javanese, Malay, Tetum, and Yami. It is closely related to the languages spoken in the Bicol Region and the Visayas islands, such as the Bikol group and the Visayan group, including Waray-Waray, Hiligaynon and Cebuano.Dialects
At present, no comprehensive dialectology has been done in the Tagalog-speaking regions, though there have been descriptions in the form of dictionaries and grammars of various Tagalog dialects. Ethnologue lists Manila, Lubang, Marinduque, Bataan, Batangas, Bulacan, Tanay-Paete, and Tayabas as dialects of Tagalog; however, there appear to be four main dialects, of which the aforementioned are a part: Northern, Central, Southern, and Marinduque.Some example of dialectal differences are:
- Many Tagalog dialects, particularly those in the south, preserve the glottal stop found after consonants and before vowels. This has been lost in Standard Tagalog. For example, standard Tagalog ngayón, sinigáng, gabí, matamís, are pronounced and written ngay-on, sinig-ang, gab-i, and matam-is in other dialects.
- In Teresian-Morong Tagalog, is usually preferred over. For example, bundók, dagat, dingdíng, and isdâ become bunrók, ragat, ringríng, and isrâ, e.g. "sandók sa dingdíng" becoming "sanrók sa ringríng".
- In many southern dialects, the progressive aspect infix of -um- verbs is na-. For example, standard Tagalog kumakain is nákáin in Quezon and Batangas Tagalog. This is the butt of some jokes by other Tagalog speakers, for should a Southern Tagalog ask nákáin ka ba ng patíng?, he would be understood as saying "Has a shark eaten you?" by speakers of the Manila Dialect.
- Some dialects have interjections which are considered a regional trademark. For example, the interjection ala e! usually identifies someone from Batangas as does hane?! in Rizal and Quezon provinces.
One example is the verb conjugation paradigms. While some of the affixes are different, Marinduque also preserves the imperative affixes, also found in Visayan and Bikol languages, that have mostly disappeared from most Tagalog early 20th century; they have since merged with the infinitive.
| Manila Tagalog | Marinduqueño Tagalog | English |
| Susulat siná María at Esperanza kay Juan. | Másúlat da María at Esperanza kay Juan. | "María and Esperanza will write to Juan." |
| Mag-aaral siya sa Maynilà. | Gaaral siya sa Maynilà. | " will study in Manila." |
| Maglutò ka na. | Paglutò. | "Cook now." |
| Kainin mo iyán. | Kaina yaan. | "Eat it." |
| Tinatawag tayo ni Tatay. | Inatawag nganì kitá ni Tatay. | "Father is calling us." |
| Tútulungan ba kayó ni Hilario? | Atulungan ga kamo ni Hilario? | "Is Hilario going to help you?" |
Northern and central dialects form the basis for the national language.
Accents
The Tagalog language also boasts accentations unique to some parts of Tagalog-speaking regions. For example, in some parts of Manila, a strong pronunciation of i exists and vowel-switching of o and u exists so words like "gising" is pronounced as "giseng" with a strong 'e' and the word "tagu-taguan" is pronounced as "tago-tagoan" with a mild 'o'.Batangas Tagalog boasts the most distinctive accent in Tagalog compared to the more Hispanized northern accents of the language. The Batangas accent has been featured in film and television and Filipino actor Leo Martinez speaks with this accent. Martinez's accent, however, will quickly be recognized by native Batangueños as representative of the accent in western Batangas which is milder compared to that used in the eastern part of the province.
Bulacan Tagalog has more deep words and accented like Filipino during the Spanish period.
Quezon and Aurora's has unique accents. Quezon's Tagalog has also has several unique words, and each town has a different tone, like in Sariaya, Atimonan and Gumaca.
Cavite accent specifically in the lowland part of the province were a mix of deep Tagalog and Chavacano, a language also spoken in Zamboanga while in upland Cavite like in the municipalities of Alfonso, Cavite, Magallanes, Cavite as well as Tagaytay City uses the accent comparable to the accent used in western Batangas due to its proximity.
Laguna also has a different set of accents, notably in the municipality of Alaminos, Laguna and the City of San Pablo, Laguna has the accent comparable to the accent used in eastern Batangas while the accent used in the northern parts of Laguna such as Biñan, Laguna and San Pedro, Laguna uses the accent comparable to Manila Tagalog.
Nueva Ecija's accent is like Bulacan's, but with different intonations. Tarlac also has this accent.
Code-switching with English
Taglish and Englog are names given to a mix of English and Tagalog. The amount of English vs. Tagalog varies from the occasional use of English loan words to changing language in mid-sentence. Such code-switching is prevalent throughout the Philippines and in various languages of the Philippines other than Tagalog.Code-mixing also entails the use of foreign words that are "Filipinized" by reforming them using Filipino rules, such as verb conjugations. Users typically use Filipino or English words, whichever comes to mind first or whichever is easier to use.
City-dwellers are more likely to do this.
The practice is common in television, radio, and print media as well. Advertisements from companies like Wells Fargo, Wal-Mart, Albertsons, McDonald's, and Western Union have contained Taglish.
Phonology
Tagalog has 33 phonemes: 19 of them are consonants and 14 are vowels. Syllable structure is relatively simple, being maximally CrVC, where Cr only occurs in borrowed words such as trak "truck" or sombréro "hat".Vowels
Tagalog has ten simple vowels, five long and five short, and four diphthongs. Before appearing in the area north of the Pasig river, Tagalog had three vowel qualities:,, and. This was later expanded to five with the introduction of words from central and northern Philippines, such as the Kapampangan, Pangasinan and Ilocano languages, as well as Spanish words.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
- an open central unrounded vowel roughly similar to English "father"; in the middle of a word, a near-open central vowel similar to Received Pronunciation "cup"; or an open front unrounded vowel similar to Received Pronunciation or California English "hat"
- an open-mid front unrounded vowel similar to General American English "bed"
- a close front unrounded vowel similar to English "machine"
- a mid back rounded vowel similar to General American English "soul" or Philippine English "forty"
- a close back rounded vowel similar to English "flute"
The four diphthongs are,,, and. Long vowels are not written apart from pedagogical texts, where an acute accent is used: á é í ó ú.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | ' | ' | |
| Near-close | |||
| Mid | ' | ||
| Open-mid | ' | ||
| Near-open | |||
| Open |
The table above shows all the possible realizations for each of the five vowel sounds depending on the speaker's origin or proficiency. The five general vowels are in bold.
Consonants
Below is a chart of Tagalog consonants. All the stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions including at the beginning of a word. Loanword variants using these phonemes are italicized inside the angle brackets.- between vowels has a tendency to become as in loch, German Bach, whereas in the initial position it has a tendency to become, especially in the Manila dialect.
- Intervocalic and tend to become, as in Spanish agua, especially in the Manila dialect.
- and were once allophones, and they still vary grammatically, with initial becoming intervocalic in many words.
- A glottal stop that occurs in pausa is omitted when it is in the middle of a phrase, especially in the Metro Manila area. The vowel it follows is then lengthened. However, it is preserved in many other dialects.
- The phoneme is an alveolar rhotic that has a free variation between a trill, a flap and an approximant.
- The phoneme may become a consonant cluster in between vowels such as sadyâ.
- the word starts with a vowel, like aso
- the word includes a dash followed by a vowel, like mag-aral
- the word has two vowels next to each other, like paano
- the word starts with a prefix followed by a verb that starts with a vowel, like mag-aayos
Stress and final glottal stop
Tagalog words are often distinguished from one another by the position of the stress and/or the presence of a final glottal stop. In formal or academic settings, stress placement and the glottal stop are indicated by a diacritic above the final vowel. The penultimate primary stress position is the default stress type and so is left unwritten except in dictionaries.
| Common spelling | Stressed non-ultimate syllable no diacritic | Stressed ultimate syllable acute accent | Unstressed ultimate syllable with glottal stop grave accent | Stressed ultimate syllable with glottal stop circumflex accent |
| baka | baka | baká | ||
| pito | pito | pitó | ||
| bayaran | bayaran | bayarán | ||
| bata | bata | batá | batà | |
| sala | sala | salà | salâ | |
| baba | baba | babá | babà | babâ |
| labi | / labì | / labî |
Grammar
Writing system
Tagalog, like other Philippines languages today, is written using the Latin alphabet. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1521 and the beginning of their colonization in 1565, Tagalog was written in an abugida—or alphasyllabary—called Baybayin. This system of writing gradually gave way to the use and propagation of the Latin alphabet as introduced by the Spanish. As the Spanish began to record and create grammars and dictionaries for the various languages of the Philippine archipelago, they adopted systems of writing closely following the orthographic customs of the Spanish language and were refined over the years. Until the first half of the 20th century, most Philippine languages were widely written in a variety of ways based on Spanish orthography.In the late 19th century, a number of educated Filipinos began proposing for revising the spelling system used for Tagalog at the time. In 1884, Filipino doctor and student of languages Trinidad Pardo de Tavera published his study on the ancient Tagalog script Contribucion para el Estudio de los Antiguos Alfabetos Filipinos and in 1887, published his essay El Sanscrito en la lengua Tagalog which made use of a new writing system developed by him. Meanwhile, Jose Rizal, inspired by Pardo de Tavera's 1884 work, also began developing a new system of orthography. A major noticeable change in these proposed orthographies was the use of the letter ⟨k⟩ rather than ⟨c⟩ and ⟨q⟩ to represent the phoneme.
In 1889, the new bilingual Spanish-Tagalog La España Oriental newspaper, of which Isabelo de los Reyes was an editor, began publishing using the new orthography stating in a footnote that it would "use the orthography recently introduced by... learned Orientalis". This new orthography, while having its supporters, was also not initially accepted by several writers. Soon after the first issue of La España, Pascual H. Poblete's Revista Católica de Filipina began a series of articles attacking the new orthography and its proponents. A fellow writer, Pablo Tecson was also critical. Among the attacks was the use of the letters "k" and "w" as they were deemed to be of German origin and thus its proponents were deemed as "unpatriotic". The publishers of these two papers would eventually merge as La Lectura Popular in January 1890 and would eventually make use of both spelling systems in its articles. Pedro Laktaw, a schoolteacher, published the first Spanish-Tagalog dictionary using the new orthography in 1890.
In April 1890, Jose Rizal authored an article Sobre la Nueva Ortografia de la Lengua Tagalog in the Madrid-based periodical La Solidaridad. In it, he addressed the criticisms of the new writing system by writers like Pobrete and Tecson and the simplicity, in his opinion, of the new orthography. Rizal described the orthography promoted by Pardo de Tavera as "more perfect" than what he himself had developed. The new orthography was however not broadly adopted initially and was used inconsistently in the bilingual periodicals of Manila until the early 20th century. The revolutionary society Kataás-taasan, Kagalang-galang Katipunan ng̃ mg̃á Anak ng̃ Bayan or Katipunan made use of the k-orthography and the letter k featured prominently on many of its flags and insignias.
In 1937, Tagalog was selected to serve as basis for the country's national language. In 1940, the Balarílà ng Wikang Pambansâ of grammarian Lope K. Santos introduced the Abakada alphabet. This alphabet consists of 20 letters and became the standard alphabet of the national language. The orthography as used by Tagalog would eventually influence and spread to the systems of writing used by other Philippine languages. In 1987, the ABAKADA was dropped and in its place is the expanded Filipino alphabet.
Baybayin
Tagalog was written in an abugida called Baybayin prior to the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines, in the 16th century. This particular writing system was composed of symbols representing three vowels and 14 consonants. Belonging to the Brahmic family of scripts, it shares similarities with the Old Kawi script of Java and is believed to be descended from the script used by the Bugis in Sulawesi.Although it enjoyed a relatively high level of literacy, Baybayin gradually fell into disuse in favor of the Latin alphabet taught by the Spaniards during their rule.
There has been confusion of how to use Baybayin, which is actually an abugida, or an alphasyllabary, rather than an alphabet. Not every letter in the Latin alphabet is represented with one of those in the Baybayin alphasyllabary. Rather than letters being put together to make sounds as in Western languages, Baybayin uses symbols to represent syllables.
A "kudlit" resembling an apostrophe is used above or below a symbol to change the vowel sound after its consonant. If the kudlit is used above, the vowel is an "E" or "I" sound. If the kudlit is used below, the vowel is an "O" or "U" sound. A special kudlit was later added by Spanish missionaries in which a cross placed below the symbol to get rid of the vowel sound all together, leaving a consonant. Previously, the consonant without a following vowel was simply left out, forcing the reader to use context when reading such words.
Example:
Baybayin is encoded in Unicode version 3.2 in the range 1700-171F under the name "Tagalog".
Latin alphabetAbecedarioUntil the first half of the 20th century, Tagalog was widely written in a variety of ways based on Spanish orthography consisting of 32 letters called 'ABECEDARIO' :
AbakadaWhen the national language was based on Tagalog, grammarian Lope K. Santos introduced a new alphabet consisting of 20 letters called ABAKADA in school grammar books called balarilà:
Revised alphabetIn 1987, the Department of Education, Culture and Sports issued a memo stating that the Philippine alphabet had changed from the Pilipino-Tagalog Abakada version to a new 28-letter alphabet to make room for loans, especially family names from Spanish and English:
''ng'' and ''mga''The genitive marker ng and the plural marker mga are abbreviations that are pronounced nang and mangá. Ng, in most cases, roughly translates to "of" while nang usually means "when" or can describe how something is done or to what extent, among other uses.
The longer nang may also have other uses, such as a ligature that joins a repeated word:
"Pô" and "opò" are specifically used to denote a high level of respect when addressing older persons of close affinity like parents, relatives, teachers and family friends. "Hô" and "ohò" are generally used to politely address older neighbours, strangers, public officials, bosses and nannies, and may suggest a distance in societal relationship and respect determined by the addressee's social rank and not their age. However, "pô" and "opò" can be used in any case in order to express an elevation of respect.
In pre-Hispanic times, Trade Malay was widely known and spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia. Tagalog also includes many loanwords from English, Indian languages, Chinese languages, Japanese, Arabic and Persian. Due to trade with Mexico via the Manila galleons from the 16th to the 19th centuries, many words from Nahuatl and Castilian were introduced to Tagalog. The Philippines has long been a melting pot of nations. The islands have been subject to different influences and a meeting point of numerous migrations since the early prehistoric origins of trading activities, especially from the time of the Neolithic Period, the Silk Road, the Tang Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Ryukyu Kingdom, the Spice Route and the Manila Galleon trading periods. This means that the evolution of the language is difficult to reconstruct. English has borrowed some words from Tagalog, such as abaca, barong, balisong, boondocks, jeepney, Manila hemp, pancit, ylang-ylang, and yaya, although the vast majority of these borrowed words are only used in the Philippines as part of the vocabularies of Philippine English.
Tagalog has contributed several words to Philippine Spanish, like barangay, the abacá, cogon, palay, dalaga etc. Tagalog words of foreign originCognates with other Philippine languagesAustronesian comparison chartBelow is a chart of Tagalog and a number of other Austronesian languages comparing thirteen words.
Religious literatureReligious literature remains one of the most dynamic contributors to Tagalog literature. The first Bible in Tagalog, then called Ang Biblia and now called Ang Dating Biblia, was published in 1905. In 1970, the Philippine Bible Society translated the Bible into modern Tagalog. Even before the Second Vatican Council, devotional materials in Tagalog had been in circulation. There are at least four circulating Tagalog translations of the Bible
Jehovah's Witnesses were printing Tagalog literature at least as early as 1941 and The Watchtower has been published in Tagalog since at least the 1950s. New releases are now regularly released simultaneously in a number of languages, including Tagalog. The official website of Jehovah's Witnesses also has some publications available online in Tagalog. The revised bible edition, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, was released in Tagalog on 2019 and it is distributed without charge both printed and . Tagalog is quite a stable language, and very few revisions have been made to Catholic Bible translations. Also, as Protestantism in the Philippines is relatively young, liturgical prayers tend to be more ecumenical. ExamplesLord's PrayerIn Tagalog, the Lord's Prayer is known by its incipit, Amá Namin.Universal Declaration of Human RightsThis is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human RightsNumbersThe numbers in Tagalog language are of two sets. The first set consists of native Tagalog words and the other set are Spanish loanwords. For example, when a person refers to the number "seven", it can be translated into Tagalog as "pito" or "siyete".
Months and daysMonths and days in Tagalog are also localised forms of Spanish months and days. "Month" in Tagalog is buwán and "day" is araw. Unlike Spanish, however, months and days in Tagalog are always capitalised.
TimeTime expressions in Tagalog are also Tagalized forms of the corresponding Spanish. "Time" in Tagalog is panahon, or more commonly oras. Unlike Spanish and English, times in Tagalog are capitalized whenever they appear in a sentence.
Common phrases
One who knows not how to look back from whence he came, will never get to where he is going. Unang kagat, tinapay pa rin. It means :"First bite, still bread." or "All fluff no substance." Tao ka nang humarap, bilang tao kitang haharapin. Hulí man daw at magalíng, nakáhahábol pa rin. If one is behind but capable, one will still be able to catch up. Magbirô ka na sa lasíng, huwág lang sa bagong gising. Make fun of someone drunk, if you must, but never one who has just awakened. Aanhín pa ang damó kung patáy na ang kabayo? What use is the grass if the horse is already dead? Ang sakít ng kalingkingan, ramdám ng buóng katawán. The pain in the pinkie is felt by the whole body. Nasa hulí ang pagsisisi. Regret is always in the end. Pagkáhabà-habà man ng prusisyón, sa simbahan pa rin ang tulóy. The procession may stretch on and on, but it still ends up at the church. Kung 'dî mádaán sa santóng dasalan, daanin sa santóng paspasan. If it cannot be got through holy prayer, get it through blessed force. |