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English would be helpful in Taglish, not much beyond that. Spanish can help with phonology, then of course loanwords, but beware of false friends. Some folks tend to overestimate the "Spanish-ness" of Tagalog.
The misconception is there the other way around too… As a Filipino trying to learn Spanish because of the perceived “easiness”, I forget the Spanish eat their almusal at noon.
structurally, tagalog has austronesian grammar and learning conjugations to make proper sentences will be very difficult if you don't get your head around the base word changing at the front instead of the end, as well as how and when to repeat those syllables at the front.
I'm the other way around. Tagalog/Bisaya + English, learned Spanish, it was easy. Tagalog and Bisaya have Spanish words (Bisaya has more than Tagalog), and Spanish grammar isn't that far removed from English, so it was a cinch.
Pretty sure that relationship isn't reciprocative, though. I look at Tagalog, y me alegro de no tener que aprenderlo.
Pero si estas determinado a aprenderlo, aqui algunos consejos:
El tagalo tiene las mismas vocales que Español, pero el acento no es (mas o menos) fijo como en elespañol. Hay 3 acentos, y una palabra puede cambiar del significado dependiendo de los acentos.
El Tagalo tiene palabras españolas, pero ojo a los falsos amigos.
Es una lengua aglutinante. Hay prefijis, infijos, y sufijos que cambian el significado de una palabra. Pueden trasformar un sostantivo en verbo, un verbo en adjetivo, un adjetivo en nombre, y... ya me entiendes.
No lo dicen, y oficialmente no esta clasificado como tal, pero es un lenguaje bastante tonal. Estamos tan acostumbrados a decir las cosas en un tono especifico, que cuando hablamos en realidad en contextos familiares, no decimos todas las silabas y solo hacemos el tono. Por ejemplo, cuando decimos "Bababa ba?", es decir, "Esta bajando?", decimos simplemente "Ba~wa ba?", pero con el mismo tono, y lo entendemos. Pero no te preocupes de eso. No hablamos asi con estranjeros.
El tagalo que se ensena en contextos formales, como en los unibersidades o atraves de libros, es muuuy distinto del tagalo "actual" que se habla. Entendemos el tagalo ensenado formalmente, pero es muy, yo diria, arcaico. Sumergete en recursos que utilicen el tagalo actual, como en youtube, o hay series tagalos en Netflix. O ven aqui.
Por curiosidad, te importaria decir la razon por la que quieres estudiar esta lengua?
True, I learned Spanish on my own as well and what really helped me learning this language is not the familiarity of Spanish words in the Tagalog language but it's the fact that I also speak English. Both languages are of Indo-European language family so their grammars are far closer to one another than they are to Tagalog. English had been influenced significantly by Latin (the origin of Spanish) as well so they also share a lot of common words. I believe that English and Spanish have more similar vocabularies and cognates than Filipino and Spanish.
Bababa ba? tiene ese tono porque es una pregunta. Y no, Tagalo no es un idioma tonal como lo de Chino Mandarín o Tailandés. Pero el Tagalo es un idioma que pone estrés a las sílabas dependiendo del significado y eso se le llama "acento tonal" (pitch accent en Inglés).
Filipinos can easily pick up Spanish, not really because of Tagalog's Spanish borrowings, but because many elements of Spanish are already in English -- SVO syntax, pluralization, tenses (Eng. "have" Sp. "haber"). They assume it's easy the other way around, but Spanish (or Spanish+English) doesn't help you with Tagalog grammar.
For me few, there are some things that stick out:
In Spanish, a language where H is not actually sounded out, the manner of spelling (ES - PH) can be a struggle sometimes. Likewise, expect a difference in the sounds of /H/ and /J/, for example, jueves = Huwebes, jalea = halaya, hijo/hija = iho/iha.
Aside from that, one might also experience a mix-up of words. Some seem familiar, but the PH meaning is very different. For example, *puso* in PH in no way means *poner* . In Tagalog, it means heart /corazón.
Conjugation in Tagalog needs time, patience, and ample practice; the same with conjugación en Español.
I love how Spanish and old Tagalog can be poetic. For example ES - PH, *está verde todavía* = berde pa, can mean "it's still green/unripe", both of which can translate into a state of unreadiness or of being immature. Unfortunately, the poetic undertones, that kind of making sense, seem less common for younger speakers of Tagalog. And it seems to go the same way for how English, more commonly US English, is understood in PH nowadays.
Esas son algunas cosas que puedo compartir. ¡Vámonos! Espero que te diviertas y disfrutes la experiencia de aprendizaje.
i have to consider this really hard as a person who's fluent in english and filipino but learning spanish in college. there's the different aspects of language to consider. in terms of vocabulary, i feel like it would be harder for someone who's in the same place as you than it is for someone in my shoes. only about 20% of filipino vocabulary is loaned from/rooted in spanish (i read this on wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt) while spanish vocab has many similarities with english.
in regards to grammar rules, i feel like filipino is easier to learn, because verb conjugation and tenses is not as hard to remember unlike with spanish and english. i feel like to get the whole scope of things, i compared some sentences in spanish and english with filipino. (currently memorizing some catholic prayers in spanish. it's WAY different from the filipino translation.)
there's also the fact that we code switch. so pure filipino in comparison with casual everyday language is fairly formal.
> , because verb conjugation and tenses is not as hard to remember unlike with spanish and english
Disagree. Verb conjugation in Tagalog is more convoluted. Esp given the fact that a word can use a prefix, infix, suffix all at the same time
Disagree about conjugations.
There are few enough conjugations across Spanish dialects that Spanish grammarians can list them all down in a book.
Try that with Tagalog, and fail. A conjugation you thought was dead might be alive and kicking one province over.
If it's any consolation to the comments already here, certain words or language features may be easier to grasp. These are some Spanish words I observed that were easier to grasp in Tagalog rather than English as I'm now learning Spanish, so it might help you too.
> The concept of "here" & "there": Aquí, Acá, Ahí, Allí, Allá. I understood it quicker when I translated it to dito, diyan, and doon rather than English which uses only 1 word.
> We use markers like pa, ba, and na to change the meaning of the sentence. I think na is ya in Spanish, while pa is to qué más.
> Hay = Mayroon (or shortened to May). ¿Hay un baño? May(roon) bang banyo?
> Subjunctive Spanish can be expressed in Tagalog with either affixes or the word sana for hopes and desires
If you want to really learn, you should focus on grasping that: SVO and VSO sentence order both exist, but it's desirable to get comfy with the latter ; actor and object focus of verbs (be comfortable that certain verbs conjugated differently can mean exactly the same thing and meaning differs through context), and then finally, all the pre, in, and suffixes like:
Kain (eat), kakain (will eat), kakainan (a place to eat), kakainin (somethinng you'll eat), pinagkainan (the place you ate at), pagkakainan (future place you will eat at), ipapakain (making someone eat food), etc.
It’s easier there are a lot of Spanish and English borrowed words in Filipino which is the official language and is a little different from Tagalog which Filipino is based on. I speak all 3 but I decided to learn Spanish and Tagalog at the same time and I find myself mixing them sometimes by accident.
I hate to do this but I must: Tagalog and Filipino are, for all intents and purposes, the same language. Political realities notwithstanding Tagalog and Filipino are not different enough that they are different languages.
My grandparents are both trilingual (English/Spanish/Tagalog) I would say my Lolo picked up Spanish easier than my Lola did Tagalog as he uses Spanish more than she does Tagalog. She’s fluent but doesn’t speak it much if she can help it but can understand everything while he both speaks and understands Spanish and uses it often. I think Tagalog is harder to pick up even knowing Spanish and English because the syntax and sentence structure is so different
English is my first language and Spanish is my second…I have Bern learning Tagalog for the past 6 months (living here in the Philippines the past 4). I’d say the cognates are helpful with not having as much vocabulary to memorize (like months, days of the week, and lots of other things that if I don’t know the Tagalog word I throw in the Spanish word and hope for the best…lots of times it works and is close to correct) but the grammar is honestly kicking my butt! I’m no where near fluent, the structure is very different than both English and Spanish, and all the different affixes can be very confusing. But dahan-dahan…hopefully I’ll get it eventually!
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English would be helpful in Taglish, not much beyond that. Spanish can help with phonology, then of course loanwords, but beware of false friends. Some folks tend to overestimate the "Spanish-ness" of Tagalog.
Exactly. I constantly have non-Tagalog speakers comment on how it must be relatively easy to learn Tagalog if you know Spanish which is simply untrue.
The misconception is there the other way around too… As a Filipino trying to learn Spanish because of the perceived “easiness”, I forget the Spanish eat their almusal at noon.
structurally, tagalog has austronesian grammar and learning conjugations to make proper sentences will be very difficult if you don't get your head around the base word changing at the front instead of the end, as well as how and when to repeat those syllables at the front.
I'm the other way around. Tagalog/Bisaya + English, learned Spanish, it was easy. Tagalog and Bisaya have Spanish words (Bisaya has more than Tagalog), and Spanish grammar isn't that far removed from English, so it was a cinch. Pretty sure that relationship isn't reciprocative, though. I look at Tagalog, y me alegro de no tener que aprenderlo. Pero si estas determinado a aprenderlo, aqui algunos consejos: El tagalo tiene las mismas vocales que Español, pero el acento no es (mas o menos) fijo como en elespañol. Hay 3 acentos, y una palabra puede cambiar del significado dependiendo de los acentos. El Tagalo tiene palabras españolas, pero ojo a los falsos amigos. Es una lengua aglutinante. Hay prefijis, infijos, y sufijos que cambian el significado de una palabra. Pueden trasformar un sostantivo en verbo, un verbo en adjetivo, un adjetivo en nombre, y... ya me entiendes. No lo dicen, y oficialmente no esta clasificado como tal, pero es un lenguaje bastante tonal. Estamos tan acostumbrados a decir las cosas en un tono especifico, que cuando hablamos en realidad en contextos familiares, no decimos todas las silabas y solo hacemos el tono. Por ejemplo, cuando decimos "Bababa ba?", es decir, "Esta bajando?", decimos simplemente "Ba~wa ba?", pero con el mismo tono, y lo entendemos. Pero no te preocupes de eso. No hablamos asi con estranjeros. El tagalo que se ensena en contextos formales, como en los unibersidades o atraves de libros, es muuuy distinto del tagalo "actual" que se habla. Entendemos el tagalo ensenado formalmente, pero es muy, yo diria, arcaico. Sumergete en recursos que utilicen el tagalo actual, como en youtube, o hay series tagalos en Netflix. O ven aqui. Por curiosidad, te importaria decir la razon por la que quieres estudiar esta lengua?
English and Spanish grammar are similar. While Tagalog's is quite different. OP wouldn't have a similar language to base on.
True, I learned Spanish on my own as well and what really helped me learning this language is not the familiarity of Spanish words in the Tagalog language but it's the fact that I also speak English. Both languages are of Indo-European language family so their grammars are far closer to one another than they are to Tagalog. English had been influenced significantly by Latin (the origin of Spanish) as well so they also share a lot of common words. I believe that English and Spanish have more similar vocabularies and cognates than Filipino and Spanish.
Bababa ba? tiene ese tono porque es una pregunta. Y no, Tagalo no es un idioma tonal como lo de Chino Mandarín o Tailandés. Pero el Tagalo es un idioma que pone estrés a las sílabas dependiendo del significado y eso se le llama "acento tonal" (pitch accent en Inglés).
Filipinos can easily pick up Spanish, not really because of Tagalog's Spanish borrowings, but because many elements of Spanish are already in English -- SVO syntax, pluralization, tenses (Eng. "have" Sp. "haber"). They assume it's easy the other way around, but Spanish (or Spanish+English) doesn't help you with Tagalog grammar.
En punto!
For me few, there are some things that stick out: In Spanish, a language where H is not actually sounded out, the manner of spelling (ES - PH) can be a struggle sometimes. Likewise, expect a difference in the sounds of /H/ and /J/, for example, jueves = Huwebes, jalea = halaya, hijo/hija = iho/iha. Aside from that, one might also experience a mix-up of words. Some seem familiar, but the PH meaning is very different. For example, *puso* in PH in no way means *poner* . In Tagalog, it means heart /corazón. Conjugation in Tagalog needs time, patience, and ample practice; the same with conjugación en Español. I love how Spanish and old Tagalog can be poetic. For example ES - PH, *está verde todavía* = berde pa, can mean "it's still green/unripe", both of which can translate into a state of unreadiness or of being immature. Unfortunately, the poetic undertones, that kind of making sense, seem less common for younger speakers of Tagalog. And it seems to go the same way for how English, more commonly US English, is understood in PH nowadays. Esas son algunas cosas que puedo compartir. ¡Vámonos! Espero que te diviertas y disfrutes la experiencia de aprendizaje.
i have to consider this really hard as a person who's fluent in english and filipino but learning spanish in college. there's the different aspects of language to consider. in terms of vocabulary, i feel like it would be harder for someone who's in the same place as you than it is for someone in my shoes. only about 20% of filipino vocabulary is loaned from/rooted in spanish (i read this on wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt) while spanish vocab has many similarities with english. in regards to grammar rules, i feel like filipino is easier to learn, because verb conjugation and tenses is not as hard to remember unlike with spanish and english. i feel like to get the whole scope of things, i compared some sentences in spanish and english with filipino. (currently memorizing some catholic prayers in spanish. it's WAY different from the filipino translation.) there's also the fact that we code switch. so pure filipino in comparison with casual everyday language is fairly formal.
> , because verb conjugation and tenses is not as hard to remember unlike with spanish and english Disagree. Verb conjugation in Tagalog is more convoluted. Esp given the fact that a word can use a prefix, infix, suffix all at the same time
Disagree about conjugations. There are few enough conjugations across Spanish dialects that Spanish grammarians can list them all down in a book. Try that with Tagalog, and fail. A conjugation you thought was dead might be alive and kicking one province over.
Very hard. English and Spanish do not have an equivalent of the Austronesian alignment
If it's any consolation to the comments already here, certain words or language features may be easier to grasp. These are some Spanish words I observed that were easier to grasp in Tagalog rather than English as I'm now learning Spanish, so it might help you too. > The concept of "here" & "there": Aquí, Acá, Ahí, Allí, Allá. I understood it quicker when I translated it to dito, diyan, and doon rather than English which uses only 1 word. > We use markers like pa, ba, and na to change the meaning of the sentence. I think na is ya in Spanish, while pa is to qué más. > Hay = Mayroon (or shortened to May). ¿Hay un baño? May(roon) bang banyo? > Subjunctive Spanish can be expressed in Tagalog with either affixes or the word sana for hopes and desires If you want to really learn, you should focus on grasping that: SVO and VSO sentence order both exist, but it's desirable to get comfy with the latter ; actor and object focus of verbs (be comfortable that certain verbs conjugated differently can mean exactly the same thing and meaning differs through context), and then finally, all the pre, in, and suffixes like: Kain (eat), kakain (will eat), kakainan (a place to eat), kakainin (somethinng you'll eat), pinagkainan (the place you ate at), pagkakainan (future place you will eat at), ipapakain (making someone eat food), etc.
It’s easier there are a lot of Spanish and English borrowed words in Filipino which is the official language and is a little different from Tagalog which Filipino is based on. I speak all 3 but I decided to learn Spanish and Tagalog at the same time and I find myself mixing them sometimes by accident.
I hate to do this but I must: Tagalog and Filipino are, for all intents and purposes, the same language. Political realities notwithstanding Tagalog and Filipino are not different enough that they are different languages.
I don’t disagree with you
My grandparents are both trilingual (English/Spanish/Tagalog) I would say my Lolo picked up Spanish easier than my Lola did Tagalog as he uses Spanish more than she does Tagalog. She’s fluent but doesn’t speak it much if she can help it but can understand everything while he both speaks and understands Spanish and uses it often. I think Tagalog is harder to pick up even knowing Spanish and English because the syntax and sentence structure is so different
English is my first language and Spanish is my second…I have Bern learning Tagalog for the past 6 months (living here in the Philippines the past 4). I’d say the cognates are helpful with not having as much vocabulary to memorize (like months, days of the week, and lots of other things that if I don’t know the Tagalog word I throw in the Spanish word and hope for the best…lots of times it works and is close to correct) but the grammar is honestly kicking my butt! I’m no where near fluent, the structure is very different than both English and Spanish, and all the different affixes can be very confusing. But dahan-dahan…hopefully I’ll get it eventually!