Arm Yourself with a Good
English-Tagalog Dictionary
One of the problems a person wanting to learn the Filipino language would encounter is finding a dependable English-Tagalog dictionary. You will definitely come across several in major bookstores, but the search can be very frustrating, as any local would admit.
An effective English-Tagalog dictionary should not only give simple translations, but should also give appendices to common expressions, accentuations, and pronunciations - even if Tagalog is largely read "as the words are spelled."
There are several hundred dialects in the Philippines and almost each provice has a dialect of its own. However, Tagalog is at least understood, if not spoken in all provinces in the Philippines.
Thus, if ever you want to learn some sort of Filipino dialect, it would be best to learn Tagalog.
Why do people go through all the trouble learning the language, when you can practically survive as a tourist in the Philippines if you know how to speak English?
After all, almost all the shop signs, mass transportation systems, and products have signs or labels in English.
Yet many non-Filipinos still have a burning desire to find a good English-Tagalog dictionary and learn Tagalog because they know how the locals take warmly to Tagalog-speaking foreigners.
It tickles them pink to hear blondes react with an emotive "Aray!" ("Ouch!") or "Ang mahal naman" ("It's too expensive").
Because of the scarcity of reliable references, foreigners often end up asking their Filipino friends for word-for-word translations.
If they are diligent enough - that is, listing down a few words each day - they may be able to learn the ropes in perhaps a few months or so.
It's a language that is relatively easy to learn as it adopts hundreds of words from Spanish and has also adopted several English words as well, with just a few variations in spelling.
The letters "f" and "v", for instance, are nonexistent in the old Filipino alphabet, so adopted words are instead spelled with "p" and "b".
Foreigners are not the only ones hoping to grab a useful English-Tagalog dictionary - even young, non-Tagalog speaking Filipinos need a translation reference to help them through school.
They are the Filipinos from any of the other provinces having their own language - Visayan, Ilocano, Kapampangan, or Ilonggo, to name a few. But because English and Tagalog are the languages taught in all schools all over the country, they are forced to be 'trilingual' at an early age!
Travel brochures and handbooks on the Philippines, as a first-time visitor would soon discover, aren't much help; for example, most travel brochures would suggest the greeting, "mabuhay" to mean "good day" or literally, "long live...!" when, in reality, no Filipino normally uses that in toasts, much less in everyday language.
Other important but confusing terms commonly used are those of numeration. Oftentimes, it's the Spanish terms used to express time and money, not Tagalog.
Thus, a practical English-Tagalog dictionary should also include useful guidelines on which terms are actually used in everyday life.
Two books that come close to being ideal are the Tagalog-English/English Standard Dictionary compiled by Carl R. Galvez Rubino and the English-Tagalog Dictionary by Leo James English.
The former has sections on Tagalog orthography, affixes, grammar, slang words, and even proverbs.
The latter, on the other hand, was curiously written not by a Filipino but by an Australian priest. Its 2005 edition boasts more than a thousand pages with a grand total of more than 80,000 entries including nuances and English sentences translated into their most accurate Tagalog versions.
Jose Villa Panganiban, former director of the Institute of National Language, acknowledged the priest's English-Tagalog dictionary as "so far the most adequate, the most scholarly, and the most complete English-Tagalog dictionary ever published."
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