Similarities of Spanish and Tagalog

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Similiarities Between Spanish and Tagalog

10/16/09

Due to Spain's colonial rule of the Philippines, many words from Spanish were incorporated into the Tagalog language.

The best way for Spanish speakers to learn Tagalog is to pad one's vocabulary with the Spanish derived words. And since Spanish is a commonly spoken language I'll devote my first lesson to Spanish speakers seeking to learn Tagalog.

During my stay in the Philippines, I've slowly compiled a table of Spanish-Tagalog words. And I am learning new words everyday so stay tuned to this table.

WARNING: In some cases, the Spanish derived word may not be understood by everybody due to the fact that there may be a couple of words with the same meaning.

For example, in the dictionary I saw that the word for socks could be used as either "medyas" or "kalsetin". The former is used quite frequently while the latter is derived from the Spanish word "calcetines". I tried to use the word "kalsetin" because that was a word I was most comfortable with but nobody could understand what I wanted.

I have seen market expressed as merkado or palengke. I have seen church expressed as inglesya or simbahan. I have seen book expressed as libro or aklat. Since I'm not a native Tagalog speaker nor am I a Philippines resident, I cannot begin to explain how and in which circumstances is it proper to use which word. Or even which region, etc...

But because I developed this table based on words that I've heard instead of words that I've seen in a dictionary, I believe these are the most common of spanish-derived Tagalog words.

In addition to this table, the months, the days of the week, and telling time is derived from Spanish. So if you know these words in Spanish then reproduce them and you will know the Tagalog word. The pronounciation for these words are a bit different but the Spanish pronunciation is, for the most part, understandable by most filipinos. The one exception to this is the word for Sunday. It is not domingo as it is in Spanish, it is linggo which also has a dual meaning for "week". As in 3 linggos meaning "three weeks".