Breakfast @Vurma and complicated tagalog

I just came home from a nice breakfast at Vurma, delicious yoghurt with raspberries and sandwiches with cheese and avocado, yummy! And coffee of course.

I'm starting to realize that tagalog is complicated, a lot more complicated than I first thought. Yesterday I found out a quite strange thing. I'll try to explain it. It's about pronouns and adjectives. You know pronouns are words that you use instead of names, like I, he, her, their etc. and adjectives are describing words.

What's different in tagalog is that you use different pronouns depending on whether you want to express that something/someone is nice (as an example) or if you want to emphasize it more and say that something/someone is so nice or very nice. Let's look at some examples.

In English you would say:
- Sara is nice
which in tagalog is:
- Mabait si Sara
Literally translated this means:
- Nice [marker] Sara

But now, if you want to emphasize how nice I am (which you do!) you will say: 
- Sara is so nice
and in tagalog:
- Ang bait ni Sara
which literally means:
- How nice of Sara

It's definitely not the same structure as English or Swedish.. As you can see you take away ma-  from the adjective and only use the root, you also add ang in front of the root: mabait (nice) becomes ang bait (so/how nice). The marker si also changes for ni.


I think another example makes it more clear:

- He/she is thin --> Payat siya --> Thin he/she

- He/she is so thin --> Ang payat niya --> How thin of him/her

Obviously the word payat doesn't have the prefix ma- so you don't need to change that but you need to add ang. You can also see that siya (pronounced 'sha') has changed to niya. 

Another example, and now you probably get the structure: 

- Maganda ito - this is pretty
- Ang ganda nito - this is so pretty 

I realize that this was more complicated to explain than to understand, hope you got some of it at least. And hope you understand that I'm having a hard time learning tagalog :)

Enjoy your Saturday!

Jeepney

Sorry, it didn't mean jeep. In the Philippines you go by jeepney, which is different. From the beginning it was rebuilt jeeps but nowadays they are produced like that from the beginning. Chrome, details and color seem to be very important when it comes to jeepneys.

So, if you want to try tagalog when you are on vacation in the Philippines, try this:
P = passenger = you!
J = Jeepney guy

P: Bayad.
J: Ilan?
P: Isa lang (dalawa / tatlo / apat...)
J: Saan kayo bababa'?
P: Sa bayan / Sa palengke
J: Eto ang sukli'
P: Salamat

And with explanation:
P: Bayad. --> (emphasis on the first syllable: Bayad) Bayad is what you say when you pay, like "here's my fare"
J: Ilan? --> For how many?
P: Isa lang (dalawa / tatlo / apat...) --> Just one (two / three / four...)
J: Saan kayo bababa'? --> Where will you get off?
P: Sa bayan / Sa palengke --> In town / at the market
J: Eto ang sukli' --> Here's the change
P: Salamat --> Thank you

Chat box

Magandang umaga everyone! I just added a chat box to the blog so try it out!

More tagalog is coming soon, at the moment I'm learning how to go by jeep to the market :)

Slowly slowly..

Very slow progression this weekend, unfortunately. I blame the sun and the spring, who can stay inside and study when the sun is shining from a clear blue sky? You don't even need a jacket any longer (at least at some times of the day). The mission of the coming week is to fill my smart phone with tagalog dialogues so I can combine the two activities. :)

But, at least I figured out one thing this weekend, namely the difference between these three, and similarly contructed, sentences:

1) maalat ang isda´
2) maalat na isda´
3) isdang maalat

1) means salty the fish --> the fish is salty
2) salty [linker] fish --> salty fish
3) fish [linker] salty --> fish that is salty

The linker-thing in tagalog is exactly what it sounds like, a word with no specific meaning, it just links two words together. In the examples above it links the adjective with the noun.

The linker is either "na" or "-ng". Use "na" after words that end with a consonant (except 'n') and use "-ng" after words that end with a vowel or the letter 'n'.

I hope it soon will become more clear exactly when to use it..

Thursday club a.k.a Torsdagsklubben

Masarap ang alak.

That's my own construction of the sentence 'the wine is tasty'. I hope it's right.

Masarap ang pagkain.
Masarap ang itlog
Masarap ang mangga
Masarap ang pinya..

So many tasty things out there.

Mama

In one way it's making it easy, but in another way it's veeery confusing. All adjectives begin with 'ma'. Mamamamama. Some examples:

mapait - bitter
maalat - salty
masarap - tasty
matamis - sweet
maasim - sour
malamig - cold
mainit - warm

Confused today

           today -   ngayon
    every day -   araw-araw
earlier today -   kanina
   later today -   mamaya'

Where is the logic..?

Rice and fish for breakfast

I'm learning breakfast words. In tagalog that means I learn words like rice, fish and meat. Yummie.

cooked rice - kanin
fish - isda'
meat - karne

Online course

I just came home from the library where I picked up the tagalog book that I reserved. It happened to be a book from 1965, 500 pages of tagalog grammar and exercises. I didn't make me too excited.. I decided to buy the online course instead, they charged me €53,13, so it'd better be good! But at least I've got 60 lessons to listen to. 

Saturday!

Magandang umaga kaibigan. Well, noon is not morning for everybody but for me Saturday mornings can be very long. Sometimes they last until 3 pm, then I get ready for the evening activities :)

Right now I'm drinking coffee that I bought in Uganda (very strong!) and planning the day. Here are today's activities:

- Go to the library and pick up a tagalog book that I just reserved. Unfortunately the only tagalog cd-course was borrowed already.
- Study tagalog (of course!). I plan to learn the days of the week, months and how to express the time.
- Book sailing yachts for this summer (finally I got permission from the rest to do that!)
- Have a coffee with Leif and Sofie
- Attend Victor's birthday party

Any suggestions of a good birthday present?

Thursday Club (or Russian evening?) and hazelnuts

Kalinka! Well, Russians don't drink wine but otherwise the similarities are obvious..

Tonight I got the question if the Swedish Christmas game "Filipin" has its origin in the Philippines. Eh, of course a tagalog-speaking person like me should be able to answer that philippino-related question but, shame on me, I didn't know. I didn't even know what the game was about (I was not the only one though). So, first of all I had to find out what kind of game Filipin is.

How to play Filipin: It's a game you play at Christmas and you can start playing if you find two hazelnut kernels in the same hazelnut shell, which happens sometimes. So, if you find a double kernel hazelnut, you eat one of the kernels and give the other one to someone who wants to play Filipin. The next time you meet this person, or on a certain date that you agreed upon, you must say the word 'filipin'. The first one to say 'filipin' is the winner! Fun, huh?

And now to the origin of the name Filipin. Nope, it's not from the Philippines.. According to wikipedia it's actually a misinterpretation of the German word vielliebchen which means something like sweetheart, or the Lithuanian word filibas which means small couple. This explain my lack of knowledge in this question, phew.

Now, my question to you is, have you ever played Filipin? And most important, did you win?

Dingding

Ok, I just learnt that in tagalog they speak the other way around. By that I mean that you start with what is "new" to the listener and then comes what's already known, i.e. the subject. Let's take an example:

- Maganda ang babae
 means
- Beautiful the woman (or rather 'The woman is beautiful)

Another example is:
Kumain ng ice cream ang babae - The woman ate ice cream


Easy, huh?


But the easiest thing to remember from today's lesson was the word dingding. That means wall. 

That's it for today, now I'll go and eat cheese and have a glass of wine, or two. After all it's Thursday and time for the famous Thursday club.

Time for grammar!

I plan to start studying grammar tonight and not just learn phrases. Unlike everyone else, I like grammar! I'm still wondering though whether I should invest in one of those online courses that you pay for. Is it worth it?

By popular demand...

...I'll switch to English as the language of communication. This way all my beloved followers around the world can understand what I'm writing about. ;P

Kvällsprommis

Dessa små lappar fick bli sällskap på min kvällspromenad längs Norrmälarstrand. Ljummen luft närmare tio på kvällen, helt fantastiskt! Men, nu är det dags att sova här. Aalis na ako.. Paalam.

Melodifestivalen 2013?

Melodifestivalen har ju härjat i Sverige i helgen och svensk musik i all ära, men börjar det inte bli lite tjatigt? Satsa på en filippinsk melodifestival i stället säger jag, så här skulle det kunna låta:

Obs! du gör bäst i att titta bort från själva videon om du inte älskar asiatisk karaokevideo.

Magandang araw!

Youtube är en grym källa för att lära sig språk, särskilt i början när man bara behöver gnugga in uttal och lära sig de lätta första orden. Just nu blir jag undervisad i hur man säger god morgon, god kväll, jag heter.. etc. och igår lärde jag mig räkna, i alla fall till 10, hehe. Att lyssna och repetera är den enklaste metoden att lära sig språk, och den överlägset bästa. 

Naintindihan, det längsta ordet jag lärt mig än så länge.

First lesson in tagalog

- Kumusta?
- Mabuti!

Nu har jag haft min första lektion i tagalog. Jag hittade en bra sida på nätet där man kan köpa lektioner men även prova på gratis, learningtagalog.com. 

Det är väldigt pedagogiskt för man läser och lyssnar samtidigt. Orden är också färgkodade så att man vet vad i översättningen som betyder vad. Jag ska testa ett tag till och sen får vi väl se om jag slår till på en kurs till iPoden!

Fluent in tagalog in less than one year

Ja, nu finns det ju inte tre jordglobar utan bara en men ibland sägs det ju att Asien är som en helt annan värld. Jag tänkte nu ta ett steg in i denna värld genom att lära mig ett asiatiskt språk och det är inte japanska och inte heller mandarin utan, surprise surprise, tagalog! Många frågar sig nog nu: Tagalog, vad är det för språk? Jo, det är ett av språken som talas på Filippinerna. Enligt wikipedia har ca 22 miljoner (eller 25% av den filippinska befolkningen) språket som modersmål och ytterligare 50 miljoner talar det.

Målet är att jag ska lära mig själv på plats här i Stockholm genom alla sorters material jag kan komma åt: internet, böcker, ljudböcker, youtube, filmer... Och fort ska det gå, om mindre än ett år ska jag vara flytande. Möjligt? Det återstår att se.