Tagalog/Why study Tagalog
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Hello fellow reader and welcome to this tutorial on the Tagalog language. As a major Philippine language and, as Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, Tagalog can help you get by in the Philippines better.
Now, you may be wondering why Tagalog is worthy of study. Well, allow me to tell you why?
[edit] Demographics
Tagalog is the native language of 22 million Filipinos and is the largest of all the Philippine languages. More than 65 million people, roughly about three-fourths of the Philippine population, have learned Tagalog as their second language to varying degrees of comprehension.
[edit] Practicality and Culture
Tagalog is very versatile: it is the primary language of public and some private education, the mass media, conversation, much of the clergy, even administration. It is the basis for which the national language, Filipino, is formed. Learning Tagalog is recommended for foreigners staying in the Philippines, especially if staying outside major urban centers such as Manila or Cebu. As such, Tagalog is widely used as a lingua franca.
Although only one-fourth of the population natively speaks Tagalog, most Filipinos can speak it to varying degrees. Learning Tagalog can take a traveler or an expatriate farther than English can in the Philippines. If you are taking a trip to Manila or are resting in Boracay, surfing in Siargao or diving in Palawan, learning Tagalog will not hurt at all. Filipinos are sometimes known to get along better with people who know how to speak at least some Tagalog.
Curious students or scholars can also be amazed at what Tagalog can also bring to one's education. Tagalog has a diverse collection of literary works, many of which keep their original meaning in Tagalog only. Classics such as Florante at Laura were written in Tagalog, and translations of books, such as the classics of José Rizal, like Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, are mostly translated into Tagalog.
[edit] The point and the catch
Getting to the point, Tagalog is one of the keys to Philippine culture. By studying it, you unlock the mysteries of one of the unique world cultures: an amalgamation of Malay, Arab, Indian, Latin and European cultures.
However, there are catches to learning Tagalog. As mentioned earlier, Tagalog is one of the keys to Philippine culture. Since foreigners think differently from Filipinos, there are hurdles in learning the language. For example, accentation can differentiate different forms of a word with the same spelling (as in hapon, which can mean either "afternoon" or as a reference to Japan), as in Spanish, but accents are usually not written. This can create confusion at first.
Also, Tagalog can use different word orders but that mean the same thing: an example is the Wikipedia slogan, which can be translated as Ang Malayang Ensiklopedya (the English word order) or Ang Ensiklopedyang Malaya (the Spanish word order).
Learning Tagalog, however, can be made easier if one knows how to speak Spanish or languages such as Malay or Indonesian, which Tagalog either has cognates or has borrowed words from. It helps create a better learning experience.
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