Learning Tagalog with Ate Susing

This picture is of our language teacher, Ate Susing. Ate is a term of respect meaning "older sister". (The pronunciation is ah tay) Respect in the language is big here. If speaking to someone older you should always use "po" which kind of translates into Sir or Madam. They use po often even when speaking in English; ie "Thank you po". We spend 3 afternoons each week trying to learn the language. We then study and try to put into practice at the clinc the things we have learned.
If you've never been to the Philippines, and I assume most of you have not, then you might not know that Filipinos love words that repeat themselves. Our nurse's name is Ling Ling. This is common here. The pastor at the clinic has a son named Bo Boy. Now these are not actually their real names because Filipinos also love nicknames. Their philosophy- Why go by your real name if a nickname will do. Not only do people's names repeat the same word or similar sounds, but the language also repeats itself. Here are some examples--sing-sing: ring; bukong bukong: ankle; dibdib: chest; gabi-gabi: every night; bulaklak: flower. This is quirky, but it doesn't make the language difficult to learn. There are many things that do make Tagalog difficult. The main one is syllable emphasis. I think every spelling must have multiple meanings depending on which syllable you emphasize. For example hapon means either afternoon with the emphasis on ha or Japanese where you emphasize pon. I think until just this week I have been telling people "Beautiful Japanese!" as opposed to Beautiful afternoon. Allan and I are constantly placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
Another thing that makes Tagalog difficult is that it doesn't follow an English pattern of sentence structure. When I learned French at least the sentences followed a noun verb; subject then predicate pattern. Not so here. The sentence usually starts with the verb and then gets crazy after that with the other words changing "classes" depending on what you are saying. Here is another thing that is crazy--words change their spelling by where they are in the sentence or what you are saying. This goes way beyond I see, I saw, I said. We are constantly having to add something on to the end of a word called a linker. Sometimes you change the first letter of a adjective like when you ask how something is--"how sweet is the juice?" Sweet is matamis unless you ask this where it becomes katamis. Here is another "quirk"---most of the adjectives start with Ma. There are many that might only change one letter and have totally different meanings--malalim-deep, matalim-sharp, madilim-dark.
All these things combine together to make us want to scream or pull our hair out. Our teacher makes it worthwhile. She is very funny and has taught Tagalog to missionaries for the last 22 years. She is patient with us as we struggle to learn. Ate Susing is 58 and has never been married. When we asked her if she minded us putting a picture of her on our blog, she said that was great, but to let you know she is looking for a husband...an old husband. If you would like to hear a little Tagalog you can go to the main page of our website at www.philippinemission.com and hear Ate Susing read John 3:16 or Juan 3:13. It takes a while to load if you are using dial up. Oh here is another quirk--we have had to learn 3 sets of numbers. Ok so we already knew English, but we also use Tagalog and Spanish #s as well. Spanish is used for date(except the year which is English), time and Bible verses as well as occasionally price. So today is - a kinse ang Siptiyembre two thousand five. Well time to study
Ginger