How To Speak Filipino?: **An Easy Tutorial** Parts of Speech 1/ Vocabulary 1/

Philippines is one of the best tourists spots in the world. The country is abundant of heavenly places from vast and beautiful water bodies to lively jungles. Philippines is an archipelago which means there are many islands in its territory. In every island, there's a different culture. This created the differences among the Filipinos. Also, the great mountains divided the worlds of some tribes that caused them to live in their own cultures without foreign influences. There are many dialects in the Philippines due to the separation of the Filipinos from one another.

In Visayas, one of the major regions in the Philippines, there is a lot of dialects plus some sub-dialects. Cebuano, Waray, and Ilonggo are the widely used dialects on the big lands of Visayas. While in Mindanao, the dialects have influences from ancient pioneers, conquest of powerful countries on the Philippines, and cultural language of religions.

The Luzon, the biggest land of Philippines, have the Tagalog as the main language but you might not understand some speakers because of their traditional accents.

Manuel L. Quezon declared "Filipino" as the national language because he worried of the Filipinos' cooperation and oneness.

Filipino is similar to Tagalog but there are many differences based on my observations. You can use English in the Philippines but some Filipinos do not understand it.

So that was why I created this!

TADAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

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PART 1: How To Speak Filipino?: An Easy Tutorial /Parts of Speech 1/ Vocabulary 1/

The Filipino have similar grammatical structures to English but still there is a lot of things to learn.

For example, you are in the Philippines and you are going to introduce yourself.

Ako ay si (name) - I am (name)

Ako is a singular and first person pronoun that is equivalent to I in English. While the ay is a linking verb that can be am, is, are, was, and were. You may notice that their positions in both sentences are the same but there is something different. What does the si stands in the given Filipino sentence?

Si is a normal word added before a person's name. For example:

Si Eliot Collins ay matangkad. - Eliot Collins is tall.
Ang naglaba ng aking mga damit ay si Eva. - The one who washed my clothes was Eva.

Did you notice the the use of si in each sentence above? It's easy to use, right?

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Know more!

The Filipino and English have same alphabets so it can be easy to be learned. But there are some letters that you need to know.

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Filipino Alphabet

There are 28 letters in the Filipino Alphabet while the English Alphabet have 26 only. The two letters that Filipino Alphabet have that does not include in the English Alphabet are Ñ and Ng.

Ñ is from the Spain but it became part of the Filipinos' tongues since the ancient conquest. It is pronounced as en-ye. To be easy, and yeah.

Ñ = and yeah

While Ng is naturally came from the Tagalog. It is pronounced as nang.

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Articles in Filipino Grammar

The articles in English have various types in English. In Filipino, the only known and widely used article is ang. It is equivalent to the.

Ang kabayo - The horse
Ang babae - The woman

The position of ang in a sentence is like the. So you do not worry in how to use it.

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Singular and Plural

In English, we add -s at the end of a noun/thing to make it plural. In Filipino, you just need to put the word mga before the noun/thing.

For example:

Ang mga kabayo - The horses
Sila ay mga halimaw - They are monsters.

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Pronouns

Pronoun is a part of speech that replaces an antecedent. There is no gender rules in the pronouns of Filipino so it is easy to use. The position of these pronouns in a sentence is similar to English grammatical structures.

Singular refers to a single person/character
1st Person: Ako
2nd Person: Ikaw
3rd Person: Siya

How to use?

Ako ay matalino. - I am smart.
Ikaw ay naglalaba ng mga damit. - You are washing clothes.
Siya ay masama. - He is bad.

Plural refers to a group
1st Person: Kami
2nd Person: Kayo
3rd Person: Sila

How to use?

Kami ay mga doktor. - We are doctors.
Kayo ay talo. - You lose.
Sila ay mabubuting tao. - They are good humans.

Coming soon *How To Speak Filipino?: An Easy Tutorial Parts of Speech 2/ Vocabulary 2/
Contents: Possessive Pronouns, Vocabulary Enhancements

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Vocabulary Enhancement

Lets enhance your vocabulary in Filipino!

Environment
The Filipino gives importance to the natural environment so you need to know their words for every thing that you can see around naturally.

Lupa - Land
Tubig - Water
Sunog - Fire
Hangin - Air

In the Philippines, there's no glacier, ice, and snow. But they have words for these rare things in their archipelago.

Yelo - Ice
Nyebe - Snow

While for the plants:

Halaman- Plant
Dahon - Leaf
Bulaklak - Flower
Ugat - *Root
Sanga - Branch / Stem
Prutas - *Fruit

To be continued