Customer Reviews

Basic Tagalog for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs (Tuttle Language Library)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I guess I'm a little bit spoiled by some excellent material in other Asian languages. This isn't the worst language book I've ever worked through (Speak Cantonese, Book II, by Huang, unquestionably takes that honor) but it is definitely substandard in several areas that a language learner of even average interest and motivation would find important. I give it two stars mostly because one-and-a-half, which would have been my first choice, was not offered as an option.

First, most of the exercises are of the "do it yourself" variety, where one starts with a word list and is told to make up sentences from there. Even when the book does give the reader sentences to translate, there is no key in the back that would give any idea of how close to a correct sentence one had come;

Second, there are a number of sentences in the book where words are used which are not defined, either in the lesson or in the glossary in back, a particularly serious sin of omission since Tagalog dictionaries are not thick on the ground;

Third, there are no conversations, just freestanding sentences and short narratives, so one is left with very little (if any) idea about how Tagalog is actually used;

Fourth, very little about the book is cumulative: each chapter treats a separate area of Tagalog grammar topically, and only rarely, do the later lessons build on earlier ones.

I would guess that when this book was written, it was aimed at an audience of people who had access to Tagalog speakers on a regular basis (e.g., Americans living in the Phillipines). For someone who has had to use the book as his primary Tagalog source material,(rather than as a support) it just doesn't make the grade. I'm writing this review mostly as an urgent plea to Routledge, Teach Yourself, Hugo and other publishers who have brought out first-class materials for other languages: Help! Help! Help! Tagalog is a fascinating language indeed and it deserves better treatment than it has had up til now- if anything, this is probably the best Tagalog book I have.

Well, I have family who speaks tagalog, and they wont teach me a thing, so I took it upon myself to learn the native language of my loved one, and now she is able to speak to me in simple phrases and I understand. I even know when her and her friends talk about me! This book is great to learn simple phrases and to expand your vocabulary of tagalog if you are also exposed to it often. Its just a great book!

I bought an edition of this book in 1993 after my first two visits to the Philippines.I picked it up almost every day,which is an unusual thing for me to do with a book,however because of the teachings and systematic way the book is set out it made for very enjoyable learning. Even more enjoyable than learning from the book,is getting to put what I have learned into practise during subsequent visits to the Philippines.The filipino people are quick to encourage someone who they can see has put in an effort to learn their language.This book makes that effort worthwhile !

This is strictly a reference text or something to be used by teachers in combination with other material. On no account use this as a self tuition text. But if you've got a good grounding in grammar and a good basic vocabulary there's no better place that I know of to go back and revise those pesky verbs. They're all there. And when you finally know enough, you can agree with your Filipino friends that some of the Tagalog in the texts is pretty strange. But good basic stuff nonrtheless.

For the low price, this book is worthwhile even for beginners. however, the beginner should use this as a reference and jump into it once some foundations are grasped. And do the written exercises!

The ideal beginning book for me, "Beginning Tagalog; a course for speakers of English", is an audiolingual textbook from 1965 that I just happened to find gathering dust in my university library (no luck finding the original reel-to-reel tapes!). I wish I had Aspillera's book as a reference when I plowed through this textbook, as all the tourist phrasebooks are useless.

Though I had read "Basic Tagalog" cover-to-cover earlier this year, I put it in my backpack this summer, so that I could do some of the written exercises while living in the RP. I strongly recommend doing this, as it helps reinforce grammar. Also, speak out loud to yourself, and your understanding will also grow exponentially.

BTW, I met one westerner in Taiwan who learned Tagalog from the Aspillera book, and raved about it. Since he was quite fluent, I took this as evidence that language learning is what you make of it. Don't blame the books, just be thankful they are out there!

The subtitle of this book is "for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs"; at the end of the summer my Visayan wife took this book home to Mindanao. She told me that the design of the book really is helpful to Pilipinos whose mothertongue is not Pilipino, despite the language training they get in school.

In sum, this book is very valuable for the serious learner of Tagalog, the basis of the official Pilipino language. Save your money by buying this instead of any of the tourist phrasebooks that might tempt you. Mabuhay!

If you ever want to learn Tagalog, then this book is probably the one you should be learning from. I'm a native Tagalog speaker myself, but I have used this book to brush up on my grammar. This book is pretty much straightforward and easy to understand. I'd recommend this book to anyone who's considering learning Tagalog.

As a foreigner to the Philippines who had to learn Tagalog as a second language, this book helped me the most. The lessons are simple, clear, and easy to apply in your everyday conversations. Make this the first book you buy, and it may be the last.

Lived and worked among the people in the Philippines in places as diverse as Metro Manila and Brookes Pointe, Palawan. This is the BEST BOOK AVAILABLE if you are seeking to learn how to SPEAK Tagalog. It gives you the basic speaking patterns, sentence structure, and enough vocabulary to get you into (and out of) trouble.

This book is useful for practicing useful phrases in Tagalog, but I think it underemphasizes basic introductory grammar somewhat.

There aren't many sources from which you can learn Tagalog, which is strange, since it's the second most widely spoken Asian language here in the US. In fact, the study of Japanese is the big fad right now although it doesn't even make the top ten list of most widely spoken languages (besides English) in the US, according to the 2000 census. Anyway, I'm currently in high school and studying ang wikang Tagalog recreationally, and I was fascinated when I polled my friends and familiy about languages spoken in the US...asked whether or not they were aware of the Vietnamese, Mandarin (Chinese), Korean, and occasionally even the Hmong languages, most responded affirmatively.

However, when I questioned my friends and family members about their awareness of Tagalog language...only 1 of friends knew this language even existed (he's half Filipino). In fact, most of my friends and family didn't know where the Philippines even are, and a few didn't even know there was such a country.

Not to mention the intimidation factor of the Tagalog language; yes, Chinese and Japanese have radically different scripts and grammar than English, but there are tremendous resources for both! Japanese has anime and manga as an enticing resource, and Mandarin Chinese has that whole top language in the world thing (1.3 billion speakers), but Tagalog is entirely scary when potential learners see sweet, innocent little words, like tiwala, meaning 'trust', heinously mutilated by prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to become: pinakapinagkakatiwalaan; which means, I think, 'the most trusted'. Who, among the Americans of my generation, so accustomed to instant gratification, would really care to learn the grammar of a language that would even attempt something like that, unless to get in touch with their roots?

Not to mention the reassurance of "oh, the Philippines had been under Spanish rule for hundreds of years, and the Tagalog language has been tremendously influenced by teh spansh language!3@!!#432!!" Well, not really. There are actually several languages in the Philippines that are much more Spanish-influenced, but grammar-wise, Tagalog just didn't conform besides adopting stuff like numbers (veintedos as opposed to dalawampu't dalawa), some nouns, and words like mas (more) or o (or). Yes, learning Spanish would help...with about 400 words. Good luck from there.

This book is a decent resource out of the very few affordable resources for Tagalog out there. It's updated, and contains reading material to practice on (or just freak yourself out with), and I hate to break it to you...but it's only a book. Basic Tagalog will not teach you words at an amazing rate, learn "like a child would", "pass as a native", or any other commonly guaranteed results if you don't do the excercises, and if you don't make an effort to make flashcards, or if you put no extra effort in learning whatsoever. Unfortunately, learning from a book-any book on language-will feel like work at one time or another, even if you're simply learning out of interest like I am. This is not the book's fault; it utilizes, most of the time, the drill-and-rote method of learning, which means if you only "go by the book" and not take the effort to say, watch any Tagalog-language movies or speak to Tagalog-speaking people, it might take years to master.

In short, I was very surprised by the good quality of the book. I agree with other reviewers that it should contain answers, and it is INCREDIBLY annoying that there are typos within the book itself (!), but we're getting reading material from essayists and poets as opposed to trite little tourist phrases, and perhaps the lack of an answer key was to influence the reader to become more of an active learner...to study the writing provided, to study it's structure and affirm for oneself whether one is correct or not, or even influence the reader to (in the age of the internet) ask a fluent speaker, who would be incredibly happy to know someone else is attempting to master a language they love.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it ;)

Either way, Basic Tagalog is inexspensive enough where you can purchase it, take what you need from it, and leave it if you so prefer...or become interested in adopting a ruggedly lyrical, resilient language and connecting with the equally resilient people who've bothered learning it.