3.0 KiB
| title | layout | author | excerpt_separator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Let’s eat! — And questions about ang | post | Marvin Johanning | <!--more--> |
Tagalog Diary — 2022-04-24
I want to finish a couple more lessons today, as it’s a Sunday and I don’t really have anything else to do anyway.
Tasks
- Finish lesson 15
- Finish lesson 16
- Learn about ang / ng more thoroughly
- Speak / write a bit
- Take Level 1 Practice Test 5
- Learn vocabulary
Interesting new words
- mukháng
- an adjective that translates to “it seems” or “it looks”
- Mukhang uulan ngayon (“It seems that it will rain today”)
- Mukhang masarap ito (“It looks delicious”)
- kainan na
- not really a word but rather an expression or interjection
- it means “let’s eat!”
What was most difficult?
The notes for lesson 15 include some information regarding ang, but describe it as “an article which functions similarly to ‘the.’ This article marks that the word or words next to it or after it are the subject of the sentence, which can be a noun or an adjective”. I find this somewhat confusing, as ang is not always equivalent to the English definite article. Additionally, the notes also state that when mo follows “a verb, it functions as the pronoun ‘you’”; this is correct, but not all verbs take mo. For example, the sentence Iinom ka ba ng tsaa? means “Will you drink tea?” and it uses ka instead of mo. This appears to be a difference between the so-called ang version of the pronoun and the ng version.
Lesson 16 was more straightforward and there wasn’t really anything that was difficult there.
What was learnt?
The main theme of lesson fifteen was asking whether something belongs to someone. The structure for that kind of question is rather simple and goes as follows: “noun mo ba ito?” (“Is this your noun?”), wherein mo and ito can be replaced with a different (demonstrative) pronoun (Bahay ko ba iyan?, “Is that my house?”). As mentioned above, however, it also states that mo functions as the pronoun “you” when followed by a verb; but as I know, not every verb takes mo, as some actually take ko. This lead me to want to research more about the differences between these two sets of pronouns and as it turns out, the verb determines what set of pronouns is used; actor-focus verbs require the actor to be in the ng form (“ako“, “ka”) and the object in the ang form (“ko”, “mo”) whereas object-focus verbs are the other way around. I am hoping that this will be explained more thoroughly in the upcoming lessons.
Lesson sixteen’s main theme was the teaching of how to ask what something is, “Ano ba ito?” (“What is this?”). Additionally, a new word — mukhang — was taught, that can be used to say things such as “it seems delicious”.
I also took the Level 1 Practice Test 5 and scored 100%.
!