Methods For Learning Tagalog

[jg121783 3,909]

I am taking a trip to The Philippines in October to visit my girlfriend and her family and I have been meaning to learn some Tagalog (she speaks very good English but most of her family does not) but have been too busy to spend much time on it until now. I have learned a few phrases and words and I have a phrase book with a dictonary that I read sometimes but I am no where near being able to have a conversation with anyone. I don't expect to be fluent in the next 6 weeks before my trip but I now have some free time to study and I hope to be able to have a baisc conversation with people while I am over there. The main thing is I want to be able to ask my girfriend's father for permission to marry her. I was thinking about getting that Rosetta Stone software but I have read mixed reviews about it. My girlfriend finally has a stable internet connection (that is a topic for another thread lol) and she is starting to teach me some things on Skype so that is another option I have. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[AllenMay 4life 3]

Try to watch Tagalog romantic movies with eng subtitle,so u can understand,..you might get some tips too,lol.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

Where in the Philippines does she live and what is her main language? I ask this because Tagalog is the national language yes, but they do have other languages there in different areas. My wife can speak Tagalog fine, but she was born and raised in Mindanao where the Linqua De Franca is Bisaya/Cebuano. So I have made it a point to learn both Tagalog and Bisaya. So you could learn the native language that her family speaks and ask him in that?

Edited August 26, 2015 by cyberfx1024

[tsabbas 47]

I am using Pimsleur to learn Punjabi. You can download it right to your phone or put it on CDs. It's a different learning style and at first, after doing 3 or 4 lesson, I didn't think it was working. But after lesson 8, I was having conversations with my husband's family in their native language and I completely understood it. That only took 2 weeks! If you can do a lesson every day you can be conversational in a month. And they teach formal and informal so it's more natural sounding. You can download the first lesson for free. The MP3 set is fairly inexpensive. Good luck! Learning new languages as an adult is hard but so rewarding.

[dahlinds 2]

If you want to learn Tagalog, you can go to youtube and search for: how to learn Tagalog. There's a cornucopia of videos there on learning Tagalog. Choose one that fits your liking or your purpose--say, romantic tagalog.

[Liza and Chris 2]

Wish I could learn tagalog, or any of the native Philippines languages. However, as an English speaker natively and older, Tagalog is one of the 6 most difficult languages to learn, higher than even Chinese and Japanese. Now if, say, you spoke one of those two languages, you'd find it a little easier to learn. Odd, eh?

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

I found that TFC especially now that they are using English subtitles I can catch on my quickly. It all depends on how fast the speaker is talking.