THE CHEAT’S

GUIDE TO
TAGALOG

A refreshingly easy method

Philip Smithson, Leo Lallana, Kim Villanueva

www.learntagalogfast.com
Copyright © 2017 Philip Smithson, Leo Lallana, Kim Villanueva

All rights reserved.

First edition.

www.learntagalogfast.com
info@learntagalogfast.com
Content

PREFACE - 5

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THS BOOK - 8

PART 1 - LESSONS

Lesson 1: Going Places and Doing Things - 12

Lesson 2: Expressing Likes and Wants - 14
Lesson 3: Expressing Dislikes - 16
Lesson 4: Simple Past Tense - 18
Lesson 5: Modifiers and Conjunctions - 20
Lesson 6: Simple Future Tense - 22
Lesson 7: Having / Not Having - 24
Lesson 8: Asking If Someone Has Something - 26
Lesson 9: Describing Things - 28
Lesson 10: Here, There, Everywhere - 30
Lesson 11: Ownership of Things - 32
Lesson 12: Ownership of Things Part 2 - 34
Lesson 13: Ownership of Things Part 3 - 36
Lesson 14: Liking and Wanting Part 2 - 38
Lesson 15: Whose Is This? - 40
Lesson 16: Very…slightly - 42
Lesson 17: Everyday Questions - 44
Lesson 18: Everyday Questions Part 2 - 46
Lesson 19: Expressing Needs - 48
Lesson 20: Tagalog Verbs - 50
Lesson 23: Extra Things You Should Know - 52

PART 2 - USEFUL PHRASES

Contents
Introducing yourself, - 54
Giving instructions - 61
Directions - 65
In a meeting - 69
In a restaurant - 72
Have some fun! - 76

GOOD LUCK - 78
 [5]

Preface

Learning Tagalog changed my life.

It opened up a whole new way of living for me in the Phlippines and unlocked
richer experiences and personal connections that I could never have imagined
before moving here.

As you go through this humble book, and as you apply what you learn in your
everyday life, I hope you will also uncover the beauty, excitement and charm of
this delightful archipelago.

Learning Tagalog has brought me three main things:

1. A deeper understanding of cultural differences.

Having lived in one country my whole life I had a feeling of how things were sup-
posed to be, what people were supposed to think and what was supposed to be
important.

Coming to the Philippines, this was turned on its head and I encountered people
who did things differently, thought differently, and valued different things.

As a young man, it made me realize that there wasn’t one “correct” culture or
one way of thinking that was “right” and it helped me understand how culturally
diverse the world is.

Applying this knowledge made it easier for me to accept the differences between
home and the Philippines and to adjust to life on the other side of the planet.

2. More meaningful connections with the people you engage with.

Tagalog has enabled me to interact with more people, to learn about their fami-
lies, what they do, how they work, what they think about a particular topic and
many other things. It’s nice being able to go the extra mile and have that interac-
tion with strangers, on a level deeper than just “where are you from?”.

Whether I’m at work or in the province, speaking Tagalog helps people I talk to
 Email info@learntagalogfast.com for questions or lessons - [ 6 ]

relax and be comfortable enough to get past the common language barriers.

3. An “ease of use” quality that non-Tagalog speakers aren’t privy to.

Whether I’m riding a taxi, renting a boat or looking for a guide in the mountains,
I’ve become incredibly comfortable engaging with local service providers and
making sure I can clearly have conversations about what I want, where I’m going,
what I need, how long it will take to get there, how much it will cost, asking for a
better price, stating whether or not something is acceptable and so on.

This makes it easy for me to go anywhere and do anything knowing that I’m un-
likely to run into any serious language barriers.

I hope that you too will be able to experience all this and more as you apply the les-
sons contained within this book.

Good luck!

- Phil Smithson, Manila, December 2017

[ 7 ] - www.learntagalogfast.com
What you can expect
from this book.
“The expert at anything was once a beginner.”
- Helen Hayes

Many people struggle with Tagalog; this book is de-

signed to make it easy.

What will hold you back from starting to learn any language is
linked to three main problem areas: 1. the fear of making mistakes,
2. the fear of being misunderstood and 3. the fear of being laughed
at.

In order to be good at something, however, we must first be bad

at that thing. The more comfortable we are being bad at it, the
quicker we can progress towards mastery.

The first step in learning something is to try it, to stumble, to make

mistakes and to put yourself in situations in which you don’t feel
comfortable.

It’s like learning to walk again.

Do babies get frustrated at being unable to walk? At the constant

struggle to stand up and learn? No, the baby just carries on, picks
herself up and tries again. As we should.

As life-long learners, we need to rediscover that childlike way of

not even thinking about failure and instead immersing ourselves
in ambiguity and to, as soon as possible, start to make mistakes.

This book is designed to help you take your first steps in inter-
acting with local Filipinos in a language they understand.

You will not be fluent after reading and learning the material in this
book. You will not speak perfect Tagalog. You will not be able to
[ 9 ] - www.learntagalogfast.com

read a book in Tagalog or understand the TV news perfectly.

So what will you learn?

Our goal is to get you interacting with locals. You should use this
book as a reference and dip in and out and skip chapters as you
need.

You’ll learn some Tagalog, you’ll learn some Taglish (Tagalog +

English is a very common way of communicating, especially in Ma-
nila), you’ll learn some slang and you’ll learn how to make people
feel at ease in Tagalog through basic conversations.

In this book, we focus on teaching what you need to know and re-
moving the things you (a beginner) don’t need to know right now.

It’s a streamlined way of learning, a streamlined way of getting you

to a point where you feel comfortable interacting with local speak-
ers.

This and this alone is the humble goal of this book.

Here’s to embracing ambiguity and failing fast!

Phil, Leo & Kim.

December 2017
www.learntagalogfast.com
The lessons
 Email info@learntagalogfast.com for questions or lessons - [ 12 ]

Lesson 1: Going places and

doing things
The first thing you should know is that the goal of these short lessons is to build
your confidence and get you beginning to speak and converse with Filipinos.
The great thing about Tagalog is that generally any attempt to speak Tagalog is
met with great enthusiasm and a big smile from the recipient even if you make a
mistake and sound silly. You won’t be judged for making mistakes so relax and
start making some!

V
ery often Filipinos especially in Let’s start with an example and break it
Manila, speak Taglish, a combi- down word by word:
nation of Tagalog and English.
There are no formally defined Mag lunch tayo = Let’s do/have/go for
rules for Taglish and sometimes Filipinos lunch
will use the English word for something,
sometimes they’ll use the Tagalog word How to pronounce it:
instead and other times they’ll use the
Tagalog grammatical construction but “Mag” - just say it as you see it
applied to the English word and some- “Lunch” - this is just the English word
times the opposite. Sounds confusing but “Tayo” - say “tie” like the English word
in practice, it’s not. and then “o” like in the word “go” so: “tie”
+ “o”
You may also have seen Taglish listed as a
language option on ATM machines in the
Philippines - often the choice is English or
How does it work?
Taglish.
1. The word “mag” acts as a modifier
Listen hard to people and and you’ll get
of the noun lunch and converts it into
used to it.
an action. There is no need to translate
the “have/do/go for” part that exists in
As Taglish is so widely spoken that’s
English.
where we’ll begin.

Ready?
[ 13 ] - www.learntagalogfast.com

Basic words to get you started Useful Examples

Tagalog Meaning Pronunciation

Kumusta? How are you? kuh muh stah

Mabuti I’m fine mah boo tea

Salamat Thank you sah lah mat

Walang anuman You’re welcome wah lang ah nu man

Oo Yes oh oh

Hindi No hin dee

Tara Let’s go tah rah

‘di ba? Right? [Often used at dee bah

the end of sentences]
Sarap Delicious sah rap

Po Used to indicate polite- poh

ness
Hindi po No (polite) hin dee poh

Opo Yes (polite) oh poh

Salamat po Thank you (polite) sah lah mat poh

Tayo us / we tie oh

Magandang umaga Good morning mah gan dang ooh mah

gah
Magandang gabi Good Evening mah gan dang gah bee

2. “Tayo” means “us” or “we” in English
So literally in English, we’d have: “Let’s
lunch” or “Let’s do lunch”.
The great thing is that you can reuse this
structure just by replacing the English
word, almost anything goes:
mag football tayo // Let’s play football
mag dinner tayo // Let’s eat dinner
mag beach tayo // Let’s go to the beach
mag beer tayo // Let’s have a beer
mag Starbucks tayo // Let’s do Starbucks
mag Ayala tayo // Let’s take Ayala (e.g.
when giving directions in a Taxi)
 Email info@learntagalogfast.com for questions or lessons - [ 32 ]
Lesson 11: Ownership Of
Things
You should know be comfortable with
describing things, remember the struc-
ture for that?
Adjective + pronoun
E.g.:
Matangkad ako = I’m tall
Mabait ako = I’m kind
We’re going to re-use a similar structure
to indicate ownership of things except
instead of an adjective, we’ll use a noun,
for example:
Kape ko yan! = That’s my coffee!
“Ko” is pronounced “koh” and “yan” is
pronounced just as it’s spelled: it sounds
like the “yan” in the word “yang” (from
the phrase “yin and yang” in Chinese
philosophy).
How does it work?
If we translated the example above liter-
ally to English, we’d get “Coffee my that!”
so you will notice that in Tagalog, the
order is switched to focus on the object.
We can easily switch “ko” with other pos-
sessive pronouns (your, his, her, their, our)
but let’s stick with “my” for now.
The word “yan” is actually a shortened
version of the word “iyan” (say: “eee” +
“yan”) but the “i” at the beginning gets
dropped in conversational speech. It’s
used to refer to something near to some-
one. When used alone, it can mean “that
thing there”.
More examples
Beer ko yan = That’s my beer
Bahay ko yan = That’s my house [Bahay,
say “bah” (like the noise a sheep makes)
and “hi”.
Kotse ko yan = That’s my car [Kotse, say:
“Koh” + “ch” + “ay” (like the “ay” in the
English word “play”)]
Anak mo yan = That’s you child [Anak,
say: “Ah” + “nak”]
Paborito ko yan = That’s my favorite
[Paborito, say: “Pah” + “ bore” + “eee” +
“toe”]
Note: Filipinos use the word “favouite”
liberally to just mean “i like that a lot” and
end up having many favorites of one type
of thing.
Gusto ko yan = I like that
[ 33 ] - www.learntagalogfast.com

Ownership Of Things Useful Examples

Tagalog Meaning Pronunciation

Kotse ko yan That’s my car koh ch ay koh yan

Bahay mo yan That’s your house bah hi moh yan

Aray ko Ouch! (Literally: “My ah rye koh

ouch!”)
Ito This ee toh

Mesa ko ito This is my table may sah koh ee toh

Baso ko ito This is my glass bah soh koh ee toh

Komputer ko ‘to (when This is my computer komputer koh toh

spoken often the first ‘i’
is dropped as with ‘iyan’
vs ‘yan’)
Anak mo ba ito? Is this your child? ah nak moh bah ee toh

Bahay mo ba yan? Is that your house? bah hi moh bah yan

Dito na ako sa bahay mo I’m here now at your dee toh nah ah koh sah
house bah hi moh
Wala pa ang pagkain ko My food is not yet here wah lah pah ang pag kah
in koh
Alam ko yan I know that (Literally: My ah lam koh yan
knowing that)
Alam mo ba? Do/did you know? (Liter- ah lam moh bah
ally: Your knowing?)
Alam ko ito I know this (Literally: My ah lam koh ee toh
knowing this)

Practice

How would you say the following sen-

tences?

1. That’s my car

2. That’s my chicken

3. That’s my taxi