Hard to phrase questions about tagalog/tagalog speakers

Factual Questions
1

This is going to be difficult to phrase without a bit of backstory. I’m not filipino, but I have been trying to learn for a few years. I will be going to Manila for my third time next week.

I have experience with speaking Japanese, Spanish, and some tagalog. In Japanese and Spanish when I speak with native speakers, I can almost always make myself understood, even though I know I am not speaking perfectly. The same way I can understand most immigrants that don’t have great English ability, I can often make myself understood in Japanese or Spanish (If I know enough vocabulary about the subject matter).

Try as I might, I barely EVER can get a filipino to understand me in tagalog. By the time I leave Manila on my visits, I can usually understand quite a lot that is said at the dinner table. This is strange to me because I get quite a few compliments on my Japanese from Japanese speakers (I know they are being polite when they describe how jouzu I am at it, but this is after they REPLY back to me and obviously understood me).

I have failed when attempting simple phrases like “Ano pangalon mo?” (What is your name?). I definitely concede that I have a harder time pronouncing tagalog than Japanese or Spanish, but it shouldn’t be THAT hard, in “ano pangalon mo?” there are no sounds that are completely foreign to English.

Another difficulty I have noticed, is that I will learn something in Manila, then try to say a word or phrase to filipinos here (WA state), and be met with utter confusion. When I explain what the word means, they will give a very different pronunciation of the same word… which I learned in MANILA, shouldn’t that be the “correct” phrase? And this is from tagalogs, not people who speak illocano but also tagalog at home.

So I guess to sum up my question, why is speaking tagalog properly so hard, and why is it not the same? Does it have to do with filipinos not encountering foreigners enough? Sometimes even when I use english I can see filipinos in the Philippines panic and just shut off their brain when I KNOW they could communicate with me if they tried.

I can read, and listen and understand quite well when I am in practice in Manila, but communicating even BASICS escapes me, and I’m wondering if it’s me or them. :stuck_out_tongue:

2

No one? :confused:

3

Well, Pilipino is based heavily on Tagalog, but there are differences. Exactly how much difference there is among Tagalog dialects and between them and Pilipino, I don’t know. Also remember that not all Filipinos speak Tagalog or Pilipino – there are actually more Cebuano speakers than Tagalog, and some of the others come close. I get the impression the differences are such as to impede intelligibility, but to give a false semblance of some mutual intelligibility. (These are impressions from someone who speaks none of them, based on comments by those who do and by linguists, so take them with a grain of salt.)

4

I think part of the problem may be in that people are not expecting you to speak Tagalog. I’ve had people stare at me in utter frowning confusion when I spoke to them in Catalan… “wait a minute… the words… the sounds… I should understand what she’s saying, but it makes no sense…” I get that befuddled look only from people who know me as “Castillian”; people who have no idea I’m not Catalan have no problem at all understanding me. I have even had people with whom I’d been speaking Catalan for weeks discover I was not, strictly speaking, Catalan, and suddenly have a serious problem understanding my Catalan.
(My mother is Catalan; I was born and grew up in Navarra; while Mom did not teach us the language, I grew up spending a couple months every year in Barcelona, hearing her side of the family speak Barcelona Catalan, etc, I went to college in Barcelona; Barcelona Catalan happens to be the dialect with the greatest amount of speakers and the one most commonly heard on Catalan TV - my own Barcelona Catalan is in fine health, thank you).

5

My understanding is that Pilipino=Tagalog pretty much, that Pilipino is the nationalized, standardized version of tagalog. The reason to use the word tagalog instead of pilipino is because it is a political statement about tagalog (the people) influence. So I use tagalog to be apolitical. And I am learning from trips to Manila and speakers from Manila, so it is not like I am learning some obscure dialect. It should be standard.

I’m aware how many languages there are in the Philippines. I don’t walk up to just any filipino and speak tagalog, they are tagalog speakers who cannot understand me.

I think this could be a big part of it, but that would lend credence to my theory that “they don’t interact with foreigners enough” is a big part of it. I still think Japanese speakers make more of an effort to understand me, but I probably also have a much better Japanese accent and vocabulary. Still, when people cannot even process “What is your name?” in tagalog after ALL THIS TIME studying, I feel like just giving up. :rolleyes:

6

I have a friend who’s wife is a Tagalog speaker from Mindanao. She has friends who are also, but from different islands. They can’t understand each other. They almost always speak English. The problem is many dialects/accents/pronunciations. Combine that with “not enough contact with foreigners”, and they may not be putting in the effort they would to sort out those problems as they would with a fellow native that they don’t share a common 2nd language with.

7

What if you randomly dropped English words and phrases in there? That’s normally how I hear Tagalog spoken; not as pure Tagalog, but with lots of code switching.

8

That’s interesting and makes me feel a bit better about my problem I suppose, but again I am learning tagalog from Manila-dwellers… I am thinking foreignness is my leading theory right now. :stuck_out_tongue:

I am not using archaic enough tagalog that this should be a problem. No one uses any english in “Ano pangalan mo?” or “Anong horas na?” There is definitely english sprinkled into every day conversation in Manila, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t know the tagalog word for the english word or anything.