kotse

I remember a few years ago being at an upscale sky bar in Ho Chi Minh City, talking to a fairly prominent Vietnamese businessman who was telling me about a recent trip to the Mediterranean and attending parties on a “yatch.” The word is yacht. He pronounced it exactly the way it looks.

I've worked overseas for over fifteen years, so pronunciation errors are commonplace and something I don't even notice anymore in most cases. This one stuck with me only because it was clear he was sort of trying to flex his worldly travels. Regardless, I knew exactly what he meant, I enjoyed the conversation quite a bit, I learned a lot, and I thought he was a great guy.

This happens a lot in places like Vietnam, where two languages — English and Vietnamese — are spoken and couldn't be more different. I always find it endearing, the way they enunciate words. The way they say “come-for-tay-ble” for comfortable, instead of the smashed-together American accent, more like “comf-ter-ble.”

I thought back to all of this after realizing yesterday that the Tagalog word for knife, kutsilyo, is not pronounced “coot-seel-yo” but more like “coot-chee-yo.” The s in Tagalog is more of a ch in these cases. That's why tsinelas (slippers) is “chi-nelas,” and, as I have now embarrassingly come to realize, kotse is more like “coat-chay.”

Who knew. That means for at least the last year I have been referring to cars, to colleagues and friends alike, as “coat-say.” They must all have been aware. Except me.

And yes, the American accent — and probably many others too — hits hard in Tagalog, probably not in a good way. I still drag out the o on ako way too much. I say mag like an American instead of something closer to “mug.” When I say trabaho, for the life of me I can't roll my r's.

But the main point of all of the above is that no one cares. The goal of language is to get things from your head into the heads of others, and to connect with people in a familiar way. No one is sitting around thinking “wow, he's an idiot” when you say mabilis ang kotse wrong. Inside their head they're thinking “got it, the car was fast.” And yes, they may also be thinking “wow, that accent hits hard” — but more likely it's “wow, he's really improving.”

That's one of the amazing things about Tagalog, and something that can give a person more confidence to just start trying to speak. In other languages like Vietnamese, if you don't nail the grammar and the pronunciation and the intonation, often people have absolutely no idea what you're talking about at all. In Tagalog, you can proudly say gusto ko — or basically anything else — with whatever accent you brought along, and people will understand you.

P.S. If it helps, one of the best ways to learn the right pronunciation is to make fun of your own accent. Or if not your own, at least make fun of the American one — everyone enjoys that.

Tagalog spelling is far more honest than English spelling — a letter almost always makes the same sound. But a few pairings don't say what an English speaker expects, and ts is the one that gets everybody.

Ts is a single sound, and that sound is “ch.” It isn't a t followed by an s. Wherever you see those two letters together, say ch and you'll be right.

• kotseKOT-cheh — car
• tsinelaschi-NEH-las — slippers
• kutsilyokoo-CHEEL-yo — knife
• tsokolatecho-ko-LAH-teh — chocolate
• tsismisCHIS-mis — gossip

Here's why. Tagalog was written for decades with the abakada, a twenty-letter alphabet built in 1939: A, B, K, D, E, G, H, I, L, M, N, NG, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Y. No C. No F, J, Q, V, X or Z either. It isn't ABCD — it's ABKD.

So every borrowed word had to be respelled with the letters that existed. Spanish coche had no c and no ch available, so it became kotse. The modern Filipino alphabet added the missing letters back in 1987 for foreign words and names, but the old spellings had already set.

c → k

kotse, kape, kalye

f → p

Pilipino, prito

v → b

telebisyon, bakasyon

ch → ts

tsinelas, tsokolate

Three more that catch English speakers.

Your r is a tap, not a trill. Good news if you've been fighting trabaho: you don't need to roll anything. The Tagalog r is one quick flick of the tongue — the same sound as the tt in the American pronunciation of butter. You already make it every day.

Every a is “ah.” Never the flat American a in cat. That's exactly why mag- sounds closer to “mug” than to “mag.” The same goes for the rest — Tagalog vowels are short and clean and never drift, which is why ako is a crisp a-KO rather than a long drawn-out o.

NG can start a word. English only ever puts that sound at the end, in sing, so ngayon (now) and ngipin (teeth) feel impossible at first. Say sing, hold the last sound, then start from there.

A final short story.

I was buying balut one time and asked the tindera, Ano ang pangalan mo? — met only with a confused, sort of tired look.

Her daughter, perhaps no more than six, listened, tilted her head as if she was thinking for a few seconds, then lit up like a light bulb and said, with the correct enunciation and accent: “Ahhh — ano ang pangalan mo.”

“Anne. My name is Anne.”

Six-year-olds sort of operate free from judgement, and it makes speaking and learning languages easier. May we all be more like a little kid when learning a language, or listening to others who are learning — accents and incorrect grammar and all.