so im there thinking ahh this tagalog speaking/learning isnt too difficult. Then it just throws a "ikinagagalak kong makilala ka" at me and now i want to give up. Jfc, its hard to get your tongue move fast enough to say that. Its like a tongue twister.

edit: told a girl im struggling to say that. apparently theres a word which is "nakakapagpabagabag". yeh im going to give up now

Why did you want to learn tagalog anyway?

1. i only know english
2. always good to learn things
3. helps with conversations
4. passes time
5. impresses
6. i am in their country. (well i will be)

Doesn't really answer the question though, except for number 6. The only choices aren't learn tagalog or learn nothing.

Good on you for deciding to pick up a second language, but tagalog sounds like among the least useful.

boosts brainpower to learn languages, and most motivating if it's the language you're in the country of

or city, cos most people speak cebuano outside manila

kind of does answer the question...think its pretty clear with my postings in this thread that i enjoy philippines and prob be there for awhile. Why would i bother learning french or german? the only other language i would like to learn is japanese....but i think thats far to hard to self teach as theres 3 different sets of alphabet iirc.

nobody said or implied or anything that its "tagalog or nothing"

i have no idea what kind of answer you was looking for if only #6 is an "acceptable" answer

I just meant that reasons 1-5 apply to any language. I'm not saying it's bad to learn tagalog or anything.

Yeah I was asking why specifically tagalog, not why learn another language.

There's nothing wrong with learning other languages, obviously it can be a great idea.

But tagalog is definitely a very low utility language to learn, as it's spoken in only one country and almost everyone in that country speaks reasonably good English as well.

It's not the same thing as Bluegrass learning Chinese or Jspill learning Thai as China and Thailand have plenty of people who speak little to no English. Thus those are higher utility languages for them to learn.


If you fancy yourself a world traveler I'd suggest learning nothing but the basics in tagalog, and pick another language to learn more completely. One that has more utility to it, because you wouldn't spend enough time in the Philippines to make it worth it anyway.

If you really do intend to spend alot of time in the Philippines in the years, and possibly even decades, to come in your life well then sure learning tagalog might actually be worth it for you. But I'd be sure that's actually your plan first as it's obviously not that easy to learn, as you are finding out.

Weren't you considering trying Thailand instead of the Philippines next time you are in SEA?

Tagalog definitely worth learning in Philippines if you ever want to get out of the expat/sexpat bubble and also good at helping you get girls who wouldn't look twice at most foreigners.

No one's uses "ikinagagalak kong makilala" and even if you do it's just a set phrase you can learn verbatim rather than trying to understand properly.

One recommendation would be to keep checking in with Filipinos as to how they actual speak, I spent a lot of time learning words that were completely useless.

Mandarin is probably the best language to learn if you plan on living in Asia for the rest of your life.

"Asia" is a big place... Mandarin is only useful in some of it. It's also infinitely harder to learn than tagalog, especially without the motivation and practice of living in the country.

If he's Philippines for life then might as well learn Tagalog. In my three trips to Phils seems like everyone speaks English and learning Tagalog would be both difficult and not very useful.

On a kind of similar note, my friend who I met when I first got to China decided he'd learn Cantonese instead of going the normal expat route and learning Mandarin. Obviously it's not nearly as useful a language, but in those rare situations when a Guangdong local can't understand Mandarin then he's a lifesaver. He's also the life of the party when he is the only white guy speaking Cantonese.

Cantonese that much less useful these days considering they are/have been phasing it out in favor of mandarin in the south in recent years.

Of course most elderly people in the south still speak it only, but the large majority of young adults and middle age adults speak both fluently and the children are being taught to only use mandarin in school these days.

It's also that a bigger percentage of Cantonese speakers can speak English anyway, so there's not as much of a need to learn it.

Humm you got me on this one Spiv. Why would more Cantonese speakers speak English than Mandarin speakers speak English?

Is it because Cantonese is predominately spoken in Southern China (Guangdong province in particular,) and they are nearer to Hong Kong, which is more international, therefor more people there would speak English.

Is that the reason?

Yeah, a big percentage of Cantonese speakers live in former British colonies: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Malaysia and Singapore. Whereas Mandarin speakers live in Mainland China and Taiwan, so less of them have had an English education.

thanks dude, but luckily it wasnt that big of a horror story because A) she wasnt a volume texter, just short replies....... not wasting a lot of my time and B) we just did a quick meet when both were at the mall and i already had another girl ready for that night, so i didnt waste a night to meet her

but it was still annoying to have her on my spam text list for a month without her mentioning.......


this is one of my bigger fears and why i avoid places with deposits unless i know for sure that they will pay back, can you post her name please?

this is pretty much what it breaks down to, no one argues that it wouldnt be a little bit helpful to know at times........ but its really not worth putting in time and money to once ever 6 months save yourself 5 minutes of hassle


if you are working in the business world here then it would be more useful (though most educated filipinos in the business world know english so...) but the majority of the people in this thread dont

and also english is getting more and more prevalent every day, the helpfulness of knowing it is always decreasing, kinda like investing in blockbuster in 2005 imo

i think it is. I still do think theres a pretty large language barrier in phils (even in makati where i imagine the english will be the best). maybe i wont know it well enough to even make it that much of a difference. Still worth learning something though

learning manderin seems even more pointless to me.

my thoughts are motly in-line with Salty's (RIP) and not like K2D on this subject but i cba to get into all that again

/conversation







edit: maybe the women reads this thread as shes got back to me and going to give me my deposit woo

in over 2 years here i cant ever remember a time where i was unable to accomplish what i wanted because of the language barrier


in cambo or thailand i would occasionally get some blank stares....... but here can't really think of any


that doesnt mean there wouldnt be some times where it would be beneficial...... but spending hundreds of dollars and countless hours to save yourself 5 minutes of hassle a once or twice a year??????

if you just feel like u wanna kill some time and "stimulate" your brain i guess its a decent way, but i highly doubt it will change your life much at all


(not trying to talk you out of it)

How many of those people do you see a couple times a week and have few hours conversation with? That's where I think it would be beneficial and guess why I'm learning.
Basically just not some random girl hookup

none, but how often do you meet someone 25 or under that speaks so little english that they cant have somewhat of a conversation with them? and at the same time are you ever likely to end up in a conversation with someone that doesnt speak some english?

filipinos that go to the places that we will be usually can speak some english...... unless you plan on traveling through the province (that may not even speak tagalog) and introducing yourself to completely random people you are pretty unlikely to come in much contact with people that cant speak at least some english

It's most useful during group conversation. Everyone else speaks tagalog to each other and Taglish to me. Otherwise you force people to speak English the whole time which is awkward.

quite a few actually. played pool/drinking a few times with some filipinos whos english wasnt that great so ye. Sometimes a female had to translate what they was saying when they got stuck. You dont like all that stuff so i see why you havent experienced that


I found males english was pretty poor compared to females. Like a lot worse. I agree with things rugby says aswell. Yeh i can actually remember seeing a group of people where one of the guys couldnt speak tagalog, someone had to keep mentioning to group to stop speaking tagalog and speak in english because the whiteboy couldnt understand

ok my next question would be why would you ever want to talk to a male?

lmao what. Because im bakla