Pilipino Through Self-Instruction (Volume 1) [Illustrated] [Spiral-bound]

John U. Wolff (Author), Maria Theresa C. Centeno (Author), Der-Hwa V. Rau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0877275254 | ISBN-13: 978-0877275251

A completely new edition of Wolff's classic text. This SEAP Language text has accompanying audio tapes, available separately from: The Language Resource Center, Tape Sales, Room G11, Noyes Lodge, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4701. Tel:[phone]

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Tagalog --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 362 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications (June 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877275254
• ISBN-13: 978-0877275251
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,021,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lone Learners Beware!, February 1, 2006

By 

M. Beddow "Michael Beddow" (Leeds, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pilipino Through Self-Instruction (Volume 1) (Spiral-bound)

This is the most academically ambitious of all the Pilipino/Tagalog learning manuals currently available. (The title calls the language Pilipino, but that's as much a political as a linguistic term, and as a linguist I prefer the name used in international scholarship.) Anyone who manages to work conscientiously through the material, supplementing it by reference to a good dictionary and exposure to the spoken language, now easily accessible via Internet radio and TV stations, should emerge competent in most forms of Tagalog used in metropolitan areas, apart from street slang. The big problem, though, is that a solo learner may well never actually get that far. And even one who did might well subsequently be mystified by the terminology used in other manuals about the language, because many key grammatical terms used here are seldom found anywhere else.

There are four volumes, and you do need all of them (though in the age of Internet audio resources, you can do without the very expensive tapes). Despite being listed on Amazon as separate items rather than a set, none of the four books is self-contained, and the division seems to have been determined as much by the practicalities of binding rather than any "natural breaks" in the content. The thorough and indispensible index is in Volume 4 alone, along with keys to all the preceding exercises.

Designing a language learning course of this scope is a highly-skilled undertaking, and many of the key elements have been done very well indeed. Most people, if asked to state a strategy for teaching a language, would probably say something like "start with simple sentences, then move gradually on to more complex constructions". That might be easy enough to do with a language that is basically similar in grammar and syntax to English, but Tagalog is a different matter. Many everyday utterances in Tagalog, including those made by small children with as yet only limited knowledge of their native tongue, employ grammatical structures markedly different from anything found in mainstream European languages. So devising teaching material accessible to newcomers from the earliest stages without distorting the realities of how natives actually speak and write is a considerable challenge, but one to which the authors have risen splendidly.

The material, divided into twenty-six learning units interspersed with review sections, consists of invented dialogues, accompanied in due course by largely unedited indigenous narratives, both written and oral, all followed by the usual mixture of drills and exercises, with grammar notes of varying levels of detail and abstraction. It progresses in a carefully managed spiral ascent, partially looping back on itself in a way that sustains a sense of secure understanding, while always rising a little higher and offering a broader view with each loop. In particular, the repeated visiting of common particles like "pa", "na", "lang" and so on, each time round gently introducing more complexity in the light of additional grammar and syntax learned in the interim, is a model of how to build up understanding and confidence, and the sections of "word study" which occur in the last two volumes, where a single root is explored and exemplified from a wide range of angles, are a treasure-house of idiomatic and grammatical insights, expressing, and one hopes also kindling, delight in the nuanced richness of the language.

But for all these core qualities, there are problems which mean I can't honestly claim that this course is likely to do "what it says on the can", namely serve as the sole or principal means of self-instruction for a serious would-be learner of the language. The problems fall into two groups. Some are systematic, the product of what I think are mistaken authorial decisions. Others are more superficial or accidental, but troublesome nonetheless, suggesting shortcomings in quality control during the final stages of production.

The main difficulty has to do with the choice of grammatical terminology. I share the authors' obvious belief that it is impossible to convey an advanced understanding of a language which is as different from European patterns as Tagalog without giving the learner an explicit grammatical frame of reference. The question is: how should the necessary grammatical knowledge be expressed?

Unlike the general linguist, who wants to grasp principles common to groups of languages or even to "language itself" (supposing there is some such thing) the language learner is more interested in a grammar that bridges the knowledge gap between the new language and whatever language(s) the learner knows already. So a grammar for learning purposes needs to describe and build on similarities between the known and unknown languages wherever possible, while clarifying differences wherever they matter. And in Tagalog, seen from a European perspective, there are a lot of differences, which all matter a great deal. The problem then is how to describe these differences in a way that conveys the specific uniqueness of the new language, while keeping some sort of contact with grammar of a kind the learner already explicitly or implicitly knows. I do not think this text solves that problem in a satisfactory way.

Everybody agrees that the key to mastery of Tagalog is grasping the way verbs work. Even revisionists who deny that Tagalog has any verbs in the usual sense still accept that understanding the functioning of those things-they-prefer-not-to-call-verbs is a learner's essential task. There are two generally-accepted ways of describing the distinctive features of verbs in Tagalog and other Philippine languages. One way builds on the (more or less) familiar notion of active versus passive "voice" in English, and explains that in Tagalog there are five (or maybe more) "voices". The other way abandons the terminology of "voice" altogether and speaks instead of different types of "focus". The "focus" terminology came to prominence in the mid 1960's. It was used in the influential (and still indispensible, though long out of print) Tagalog Reference Grammar by Schachter and Otanes (1972) and was been adopted in J Donald Bowen's Beginning Tagalog (1965, revised 1978), which I have reviewed elsewhere on this site, and in the various widely-used textbooks by Teresita V Ramos. It also predominates on the excellent Tagalog learning site at Northern Illinois University http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/ to which many solo learners turn for assistance.

I believe personally that for purposes of teaching the language, the "focus" terminology makes the distinctive nature of Tagalog verbs and their relationship with other components of the sentence much easier for an English-speaking learner to understand. On the other hand, I accept that from the standpoint of comparative or general linguistics, the "voice" terminology gives a better account and a clearer picture than the focus-based description of how Tagalog stands in relation to other languages and to translinguistic principles of grammar . So pragmatically, if I was asked to talk to fellow linguists about the main features of Tagalog, I would want to describe it as having a multi-voice verb system. But if my task was actually to teach the language to people who knew only mainstream European languages, I would opt for the "focus" terminology when introducing them to the grammar and its application in those initially bewildering verb forms.

It is plain that John Wolff, the principal designer of this course, will have no truck with the "focus" terminology, to the extent that it is nowhere mentioned even in passing, despite its dominance in most of the other textbooks for intermediate and advanced Tagalog learners published in the past forty years. That might not have mattered so much, if only Wolff and his associates had been more consistent and forthright in their presentation of voice in Tagalog. But instead of following through on their convictions and presenting the multiple voices in undisguised and appropriately categorised plurality, they make a halfhearted attempt to align the multiple voices of Tagalog verbs with the significantly different dual voice categories of English. Tagalog agent voice ("actor focus" in the alternative terminology) is treated as the equivalent of English active, while all the other voices are shoehorned into an attempted semi-parallel with the English passive, being referred to as "direct passive", "conveyance passive", "location passive" etc.

In particular, using the label "direct passive" (= undergoer voice or object focus) is of dubious pedagogical value. A learner who already knows what a direct object is, and that the grammatical subject is the undergoer of the action in an English passive expression, is likely to be bemused by statements like "the subject is the direct object", whereas a learner who is hazy about English subjects, direct objects and passives will not benefit from the supposed analogy with English passives which is the only real justification for the use of labels like "direct passive".

I should explain that what this text calls the "direct passive" provides the Tagalog equivalent of what are in English common active-voice utterances like "he cooked the fish", which in Tagalog would be expressed using undergoer voice (object focus): niluto niya ang isda. It is of no help to the learner whatsoever to call this usage "passive" and thus invite the interpretation that somehow it "really" means "the fish was cooked by him". It doesn't, and a learner who gets the idea, even subliminally, that that example is "passive" in anything remotely like the English sense will be burdened with a major obstacle to grasping the essential workings of the language. When we move on to other voices, the bafflement grows stronger, and a... Read more ›

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Gold Standard, July 14, 2004

By 

"infantofprague" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pilipino Through Self-Instruction (Volume 1) (Spiral-bound)

This is THE book to learn Tagalog from, if you are really serious. If you are looking for a few quick phrases or vocabulary, then this might be too much. However, if you really want to learn to speak and understand Tagalog, then purchase all four volumes of this one. Memorize the dialogs and work through all the exercises. The grammar explanations here are the best of any of the existing English language textbooks. Unlike the University of Hawaii books by Ramos, et al, this one provides explanations of HOW and WHY the different verb forms and particles are used rather than just how to make the forms. There is abundant exercise material and the authors review material at intervals throughout the book. I didn't use the tapes (which are quite pricey), but I'm sure they would add to the course. The books could be supplemented by a native speaker or tapes from a lesser book, just to hear the pronunciation.

These books are suitable for self-instruction, IF you do the work. These are very well done!

UPDATE: Since I wrote the above review, I obtained the tapes (actually mp3 CD's) for this course. They make a huge difference! While there are some issues with sound quality (which I assume was due to the old nature of the master tapes), working through the exercises increased my Tagalog comprehension and speaking considerably. I have only gotten through unit 12 so far, but during three trips to the Philippines, I was able to comprehend the majority of what people were saying around me.

The problem is that, to this date, Cornell only has tapes available up through unit 12. I wish I could get the rest.

As I noted above, this course is only for the serious learner, not for the casual learner who wants to learn some basic Tagalog for a trip or to talk to friends. It is heavy going.

But for those willing to put in the effort, it does yield results. For such serious learners, I would highly recommend getting the tapes, even if pricey. They fill in the gaps and give hours of drills and practice. There is nothing online that even comes close.

I agree with the comments in the other review for the most part, although now I disagree about not getting the audio part.

The discussion about the linguistic terminology is germane if your purpose in getting this course is to be able to write linguistic papers about Tagalog (I agree with chucking "Pilipino" overboard), but if your goal is to be able to speak and understand Tagalog, then the terminology doesn't matter much.

The presentation of the complex verbal system of Tagalog given here is one of the most comprehensible. Too many other books teach the forms, but don't say much about how they are used. This course does very well in that regard.

Bottom line: if you seriously want to learn Tagalog well to be able to speak and understand, then this is the one for you. If you are a more casual learner, then something less massive would be more appropriate.

But if you do get it, think seriously about buying the CDs.