Tagalog/Lesson 13
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[edit] Palatuldikan (Diacritics)
- Continued from Tagalog/Lesson 1
Diacritics are normally not written in everyday usage, be it in publications or personal correspondence. The teaching of diacritics is inconsistent in Filipino schools and many Filipinos do not know how to use them. However, diacritics are normally used in dictionaries and in textbooks aimed at teaching the languages to foreigners.
There are three kinds of diacritics used in Tagalog:
- Acute accent or pahilís
- Used to indicate primary or secondary stress on a particular syllable; talagá. It is usually omitted on words that are stressed on the penultimate (second to last) syllable; umága = umaga. It is possible that there is more than one stressed syllable in a word, meaning that that pahilís mark may appear multiple times, as in Repúbliká. If there is no diacritic on the last two syllables of a word, then it means that there is stress on the penultimate syllable; kásayahan is actually stressed on two syllables: kásayahan.
- Grave accent or paiwà
- It indicates that there is a glottal stop (/ʔ/) at the end of the word; akalà. This mark may only appear at the end of a word that ends in a vowel. This mark does not indicate stress. Therefore, following the previously stated rule on stress, akalà is stressed on the second to the last syllable: akalà.
- Circumflex accent or pakupyâ
- It indicates that the final syllable of a word receives stress while there is a glottal stop (/ʔ/) that follows; sampû. This is because it is a combination of the pahilís and paiwà marks. This mark may only appear at the end of a word that ends in a vowel. dálitâ = dálitâ
[edit] Older conventions
Before the standardization of Tagalog during the mid-20th century, the acute accent (pahilís) functioned in the same way as it is used in Spanish orthography today. The older version is no longer in use.
Words stressed on the last syllable use an accent when they end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), with -n, or with -s, as in Magandá, bilí, Inglés. Words stressed on the next-to-last syllable use an accent when they do not end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), with -n or with -s, as in Kabuháyan, Umútang. Words stressed on other syllables always take the accent, as in Matemátika. Words not stressed on the last syllable but end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) do not use the acute accent, unless stress is on the final vowel. In the older system, the word Repúbliká would be written simply as Repúblika. The newer version "Repúbliká" is written this way in order to be consistent with the new rules for using diacritics ("If there is no accent upon the last two syllables of a word, then the stress is on the second-to-last syllable").
[edit] References
- Paul Morrow's Filipino Pronunciation Guide.
- Concise English-Tagalog Dictionary by Jose V. Panganiban
- A Handbook and Grammar of the TAGALOG LANGUAGE (1905), featuring the older diacritical system on page 18.
