Customer Reviews

Tagalog-Pilipino/ Language 30 (Educational Services Teaching)

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

 

 

This is a very good, basic way to learn some functional Tagalog. I agree with the above review. It IS very good if a loved one speaks it. Even if you already know some Tagalog (as I did) it gives you much needed practice with pronounciation and grammar. Overall, excellent.

Mabuhay! This set is perfect for those of you who want to possess a very basic command of Tagalog or want to have some phrases handy while visiting the Tagalog-speaking regions of the Philippines.

The sections are categorized by situations, such as introductions or at the hotel, and to a lesser extent - vocabulary words like time and food.

Even if you're learning Tagalog "in-depth," the cassettes will come in handy as an aide to your pronunciation. But be warned, this shouldn't be relied on as a full course.

A good start on your way to learning Tagalog. Very good if your spouse is Pilipino.

This is a bad product, for a number of reasons. Firstly, much of the Tagalog here is painfully formal - using the translations in this book I was laughed at in the Philippines for using "deep Tagalog." This "deep Tagalog" is not only much more difficult to learn, but often socially inappropriate. Commonly used words and phrases that are in the real world accomplished with a few easy syllables are presented here as long and inappropriately linquistically complex diatribes.

Indeed, social status as subtely expressed through language is important in the Philippines, and visitors are not expected to always get this right. Still, it is not correct to think that erring on the side of the formal is always best; it can be just as awkward to be overly formal as it is to be overly colloquial. But the translations in Language 30 go beyond that. It's more like learning the Queen's English and then being sent to mid-America. It just isn't going to work, and you, the tourist, had a much tougher learning curve in the process.

The Language 30 Series to me seems to be cheaply done and forumlaic - the publishers take pretty much the same words in each region's language and have a native speaker translate them with little concern for context, and this leads to numerous errors. Language 30 seems to see language as just a bunch of individual words with little concern for the nuances of a language. For example, there are different words in Tagalog for rice depending on if it's cooked or if it's raw ("bigas" and "canin"). Using the wrong one will simply yield confusion. But to Language 30 rice is just rice. And if you can't even order rice when you've finished this language course, well, basically, you're screwed! The book and tapes are full of stupid little errors like this, the result of the authors not caring enough to understand even the most rudimentary aspects of the language being taught. Beyond that, the native speakers speak too quickly and often indistinctly. Keep the booklet handly, because you'll have to examine each syllable and rewind a lot!

Really, for a quick and dirty quide the Lonely Planet book is quite good. I started with Language 30 and then learned to sing numerous Filipino popular songs, really a great way to hone a language. After a couple months in country (after getting over the original embarrassment for my Language 30 Tagalog and having to unlearn much of what I'd learned) I was in good shape. So it is possible to learn some vocabulary from this set, which is why I gave it two stars instead of one. But you've been warned.

This set is a decent value. For your money, you get a fairly broad range of phrases and vocabulary. However, the organization of information assumes that you can keep interest listening to a bunch of discrete phrases repeated one after the other with no conversations or anything remotely natural. If you can, in fact, maintain interest while listening to these tapes repeatedly, then you'll do well with this set. If, on the other hand, you need something more dynamic, you might do well to look elsewhere.

This cassette-book has all the basic words and phrases needed for travel to the Philippines.

Ang basic Tagalog Aklat ay Basic Tagalog para sa Foreigners ang Non-Tagalogs iyon ay isang mabutie Aklat . 5 stars para sa Basic Tagalog.

Mabuhay Republica Ng Pilipinas Ang Pinoys