Customer Reviews

Modern Tagalog: Grammatical Explanations and Exercises for Non-Native Speakers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is just what it says. Basic grammatical explinations. For more advanced learners of Tagalog it could be used as a very useful tool to understanding how the language works. Begginers will probably find it very difficult to use. It has indepth explinations for all the grammatical rules, however a working vocabulary in Tagalog is helpful. Many of the examples are not translated into English.

I read this book for a class taught by herself at the University of Hawaii. This is a good book for looking at the structure of Tagalog. It is a bit technical goes into linguistic structure of Tagalog (now officially called "Filipino") For non-native speakers, the pre-requisite for this book is at least two years (or four semesters) of combined introductory and intermediate Tagalog, with these, this book shouldn't be that hard. It is full of exercises,course content, and explanations that a gramaphobe would like. Most of the classmates I took this class for were native speakers and most are very bright and she constantly bounced the material in the book with what the students said and what they know which was quite fun.

I moved to the US about 14 years ago and I am making plans to return home for a little while. I purchased this book to brush up on my Tagalog grammar and within the first chapter, I began to remember so many concepts that I forgot. Speaking Tagalog is one thing, writing is another and this book is PERFECT for helping you remember grammatical rules for writing and conversational as well. It's easy to follow and concepts such as pronunciation and conjugation are explained thoroughly. As a native speaker, I highly recommend this book although I should mention some drawback for non-native speakers.

Drawbacks for NON-NATIVE speakers: (1) Although the exercises are very helpful, it might be tougher for a non-native speaker since there are no correct answers listed in the book. (2)If you do not have a Tagalog-English dictionary or are still trying to build your Tagalog vocabulary, this book will not be as effective. I strongly suggest having a Tagalog-English dictionary handy when working through this book. (3) There is no audio companion to this book. The proper pronunciations are explained VERY WELL however in my experience the best way to learn a language is by hearing it as well as reading it. If you have exposure to a Tagalog speaker this book is PERFECT for you.

This is an excellent book for those of us who learn languages through a rules-based approach rather than the more common intuitive "use some common expressions and try to figure out why along the way" found in many books.

On the other hand, if you always hated and never understood grammar and prefer to just dive in to everyday language, you'll probably prefer one of the other books.

In either case, you'll probably want to remember that Teresita Ramos teaches proper Tagalog and some of the expressions/word choices in her books may not be the vernacular used on the streets of Makati.

Ultimately however, if you have an analytical vice artistic mind and need to understand things from a mechanical framework, this is the best book available.

This book is not for self-teaching students, but for students attending a Tagalog course or taking private lessons with a tutor as there are no keys to exercices. This is a book for beginners with a couple of weeks' initiation period behind them. The term "advanced" used in the preface is puzzling because the level is elementary. The authors still ignore the system of accents devised for Tagalog about a century ago so that their students will have to waste a lot of time checking the proper stress patterns in a dictionary. A good didactic book ought to have all the proper accents.

Be aware, this book is NOT FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS! 80% or more of this book is in Tagalog. If your not a native speaker or don't know a lot of the language, best to steer clear of this title for now.

Many people have reviewed this book as not being for beginners, on the contrary though its is a very good book for slightly learned begginers.

The reason why people may have stated that it's not for beginners is because of the lingo in the book particularly on the chapters on Pronunciation and Sentence Expansion. Those are probrably the only two chapters that are seriously even difficult. If you have trouble with any other chapter either A) your not really interested in learning the language structure and getting your sentences grammatically correct and understandable, or B) the slight use of linguistics terms is confusing, although that can be cured by simply using an "online dictionary". (I didn't know what transitive and intransitive meant but I do know.) For the most part most of the technicality of this book doesn't rise into real high complexity.

This book is great because, it's concise, easy to read ,not to difficult to understand, and actually if you read closely you may notice some rules grammar-wise that you may not have been taught whic is why this is a great book. I use Modern Tagalog book with Basic Tagalog (which is not recommended by me for slow beginners) because they complement each other well, in helping to improve the grammar.

The only negatives of this book is that although it does reveal extra grammar information sometimes like in the section on "May/Mayroon" and "Naka" you may be left hanging just a little bit. Also, it's not as complex and in-depth into the language as I thought it was gonna go so that disappointed me.

Great buy!

If you read the back cover of this book, it states that is is for the student that has advanced beyond the basic level... it is exactly what it states, a grammar book that was written to follow after Dr. Ramos' book Tagalog Structures. I find this book very useful in furthering my knowledge of Tagalog and would recommend it to any serious student of the language.

Everybody writes that's it's not an introductory book. If you don't know a lick of tagalog. Then this is not the book for book. After two months of learning this language. I started using this book. The author explained to me how to construct correct sentences. The only downfall is that they don't translate the words into English. You will need a tagalog dictionary.

I definitely agree that this is NOT for the introductory beginner. I bought this as a gift for someone. Just browsing through the book without reading it in depth, I found it very difficult to follow. Many times, there are no translations in English, even though they are giving sample sentences and explaining grammatical usage.

Seems to be very lacking compared with other books I've used to study a different language.

Maybe the receiver of this book, who already knows basic Tagalog, would have understood everything. But I'm not taking a chance. I'm returning this one and finding a book with better explanations.