Today I just thought of writing about the confusion of many people about Tagalog or Filipino language and what is the real meaning. Hope this post helps clarify it.

Tagalog as commonly known by many is the official language of the Philippines. However, the real meaning of Tagalog is the people and Filipino is the language.

In this post, I would understand if you alternately use Tagalog and Filipino to refer to the language. Speaking of which, Tagalog is a very interesting language to learn and contrary to the notion of many, it’s not hard but sometimes could be challenging as any other languages – say Finnish from my own experience.

This is the reason why after many years of teaching the language, I have come up with a book that I think will help a lot of foreign people coming or planning to come to the Philippines for leisure, relationship, family, or business.

The aim of this book is to help you make your own sentences and questions in whatever situations you might be in. This book of Filipino verbs will get you somewhere and survive the daily communication.

Now, let’s talk about some of the interesting facts about learning Tagalog or Filipino and why it isn’t as hard as you think it is.

• Filipino language is a mix of many languages mainly English and Spanish given the fact that Philippines was a colony of America that shaped the education system of the country and Spain that molded the people’s behavior through religion for 300 years.
• Filipino language is easily understood because in many cases, the sentences are conjugated with English words so the bits and pieces of the sentences help the listener understand the message.
• If you travel outside Manila particularly in the provinces, you will hear many Spanish words spoken in different dialects particularly the names of streets, people, buildings and numbers, days and dates.
• Majority of the Filipinos can understand and speak English although a decline in fluency is observable. The thing is, you wont get lost when you ask questions.
• It is simple to make simple sentences in Filipino if you know the correct way to use the verbs in its different tenses. Conjunctions and pronouns are easy to use in a sentence and you can find many free resources online.

Want to practice your Tagalog skills? Check my course here.