I have many Pinoy friends, and I have always been fascinated by their lilting accents and the melodious bits of tagalog they taught me. Tagalog has the same mellifluous charm that Cantonese has for me.
As with any other language, however, it is also a useful skill that empowers you in communicating to a specific group of people. There is a sweet little Pinoy grandma in my church, who knows a bit more English than I do tagalog, and though we have the greatest affection towards each other we can't have very interesting conversations. It struck me that learning tagalog would be a directly relevant and useful skill to add to the Wonder Book.
So I went to the library like a good student, hunted through stacks of Learn German--Learn Russian--Learn Hindi--Learn French-- (especially French--I suppose Singaporeans are very keen on French?)--Learn Arabic and even Learn Norwegian (??) to find one insignificant Learn Tagalog DVD.
Back I came with my precious DVD, naively convinced that if I managed to work through all the lessons inside I would be able to have a basic grasp of Tagalog.
In went the DVD and out came the typical firewall of technical difficulties--no driver! no audio! no patience but most of all no tagalog lessons! It took me two weeks of struggling through my own clumsy means of solving the problem (basically trying the DVD in every single functioning computer in the house, in the lame hope that one of them would have the magic driver required; when that failed, doing a series of fancy experiments plugging and unplugging various wires....it's a wonder I didn't get electrocuted or crash the computer.) Finally the tried-and-true idea of GOOGLING the problem hit me (I know--rather slow) and to my delight I discovered I wasn't the only one with this problem. I followed the website's instructions faithfully and downloaded something, cheerfully expecting it to be a virus of some sort. Everything went well for once and abracadebra! enter tagalog lessons!
Technical difficulties over, I thought everything MUST go smoothly now.
Lesson One went amazingly well--I happily memorized and practiced a handful of basic terms like 'sorry' (pohmanheim) and 'please' (puedebah) and felt pleased with the beginnings of something.
And then I progressed to Lesson Two and realized to my horror that the only complete sentence they taught me were 'Where is the bank?' Or, if you were picky, 'Where is the suitcases?'
A moment of silence for my blur brain as it slowly grasped the fact that the DVD was structured for ambitious TOURISTS visiting Philippines and not anyone actually wanting to grasp the language.
I should have realized something was afoot when the first lesson taught me 'beer' and 'keys' and 'credit card' rather than teaching me what was 'I' and 'you'.
I have absorbed as much tagalog as I feel is useful from the DVD and returned it to the arms of the library; I think I'll have to look into borrowing a BOOK to really grasp basic tagalog. NOT mere tourist monosyllables.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this first foray into a third language. There were some advantages of course. If I ever need it I can scream for help in tagalog--'Saklolo!' (which ironically so reminds me of LOL that I couldn't possibly forget it)
and tell you, with great aplomb, that I don't understand ('hindi ko alam')