Short language notes, cultural details, and everyday examples you can actually use.
From a hundred metres away everyone can tell I'm not from here. Speaking the language doesn't change that. It changes almost everything after it.
No. 012Taglish is not Tagalog dissolving into English. The grammar holding it together is entirely Tagalog, and it's the part you can't fake.
No. 011I once stood on a street corner in Davao unable to retrieve the word for hot. Now I use it three times a day without thinking about it at all.
No. 010Learn damdamin, Tagalog for feelings and emotions, through vivid stories that make Filipino vocabulary and simple sentences stick.
No. 009The best Tagalog practice partner you'll ever find sells coconuts and doesn't care how bad your grammar is.
No. 008Sarap means more than tasty: learn how Tagalog packs pleasure, gratitude, comfort, and shared feeling into one small everyday word.
No. 007Why kotse is pronounced with a ch sound, and how ts helps English speakers read borrowed Tagalog words more accurately.
No. 006How -an and -han turn Tagalog roots into places, containers, and useful new guesses.
No. 005Bolt it onto the front of almost anything — Tagalog or English — and it becomes the most.
No. 004Two English feelings, one Tagalog word — and the fastest sentence you'll ever start.
No. 003Tagalog splits kinship words into ones you call someone, and ones you describe someone with.
No. 002In the palengke the first price is rarely the last one.
No. 001It isn't please and it isn't sir. It has no translation at all.