Do you know anything about Tagalog language(Filipino)?

2 Comments

1. Dondon F says:

   November 20, 2009 at 7:21 am

   When the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines, they found that the inhabitants they called Indio had their own alphabet, and their own system of spelling or orthography, Baybayin (de Tavera). The old alphabet was syllabic and composed of three vowels and fourteen (14) consonants. One vowel represented our a, another the e and the i, (two sounds which Filipino confuse), and the vowels o, u which are pronounced in a confused manner, too. Strictly, however, there were only three (a,i,u). Each consonants in the alphabet was pronounced with a vowel which invariably was the a when not modified by a sign which was placed above or below it. This sign which was called Kudlit (certain virgules or marks which where used in the old system of writing) changed the "a" in the syllable of the consonant to "o" or "u" when placed under it, and to "e" or "i" when placed over it. The "t" Kudlit was introduced by Fr. Francisco Lopez in 1620 but was rejected by writers of that time.
   In many languages the alphabet is called by the first three or four letters in it; thus we say abecedario (for Spanish) or alphabeta for the Greek (a b). The Arabs call it alif-ba-ta, In 1914, Dean Paul Versoza of the University of Manila erroneously used the term "Alibata" instead of Baybayin since the "Alibata" is actually the Arabic alphabet. The Baybayin is of ludic origin. The Javanese call their alphabet charakan which means a "message" and the old Tagalog alphabet Baybayin which means "follow-up, to fall in the succession, and the suffix – in thus making baybayin, a succession of alphabet in which its letters succeed one another, always in the same order falling in simple file or line, thus the letters in Baybayin are read as baybay, kaykay, day-ray, gaygay,… but the Spanish missionaries changed them to baba, kaka, dara, gaga, haha, lala… (Panganiban).

   The Spaniards romanized the Baybayin. They introduced their own alphabet, abecedario and their own system of writing. In oral spelling of a word, they say one letter after the other of the first syllable, and then say the syllable, and do the same with the rest of the syllables of the word. For example, "bathala" /be-a-te / Bat, /ache-a/ha, / ele-a / la = bathala.
2. go~ness! says:

   November 20, 2009 at 7:21 am

   as what my Filipino professor said, the Filipino language is one of the most intricate languages in the world. Many foreigners studied our language but to no avail, they can’t figure out the magic behind our language.

   According to my English professor, it is hard for non-natives to understand our local language because we have different POSSIBLE sentence structures used in different tenses and forms. A slight difference in tone will completely change the meaning of the whole word and it’s figure of speech.

   for example:
   "bababa ba?" means "is this going down?"
   "bababa" -> "going down"

   rootword: baBA (down) is different from BAba (chin)

   another is ‘lakad’ (walk)

   naglakad – had walked
   lumakad – walked
   lumalakad – walking
   lalakarin – will walk
   lalakad – will walk
   lakaran – path
   palalakad – someone who usually walks

   THE OLDEST ALPHABET is the ‘ALIBATA’.