Tagalog Down & Dirty

By Emmett Henderson

Every year, millions of foreigners visit The Philippines. They go to the World War II battlefield of Corregidor, tour the presidential home Malacañang Palace, play golf, lounge on the white sand beaches, and . . .

Some do things that don't have chapters in the standard tourist phrasebooks and textbooks of the primary native language, Tagalog.

Millions of Filipinos speak Tagalog as their first language. They live in and around the nation's capital of Manila, including Angeles and Subic Bay.
 
In addition, Tagalog is spoken and understood to some extent throughout the rest of the country because it's the language of schools, TV shows, newspapers and movies.

Tagalog Down & Dirty is your guide to the Tagalog you won't learn in the other books.

Sex, drugs, alcohol, insults, obscenities, dirty talk, curse words, slurs about your mind, body and sexual equipment, the supernatural, gambling, and "gay language" — which gay men use to hide their meaning from the general population.

Best of all, words for lovers and would-be lovers.

Tagalog Down & Dirty is arranged in chapters according to subject. Next is a chapter including a long list of gay language words. And finally is a list of all the standard Tagalog words arranged in alphabetical order – Tagalog to English – so it's easy to look up Tagalog words you don't know.

Come to The Philippines prepared to recognize such basic insults as "Your mother is a ______," "You're _____" and "You have no _____ ."

(Don't say themself yourself, though, unless you're prepared to defend yourself!)

Discover the Tagalog words for parts of your body, at least the most interesting parts, and their functions.

Learn the names of the many monsters and ghosts you must avoid at night.

If you're a man who has sex with other men, discover how Filipino gays classify your sexuality.

Because language is intimately tied to culture, you'll get an inside look at how different Filipinos value are from average Western countries.

Call an American woman "ugly" and you'll probably get a lecture on how men objectify women and/or men should look for beautiful personalities. Call a Filipino woman "ugly" and you better run fast!

Tell an American they have no shame, and they probably won't even know what you're talking about. If you say it to a Filipino, you better run for your life.

Describe an American woman as flirtatious and she'll take it as a compliment. Tell a Filipino woman that and, depending on circumstances, she may take it as an insult to her sexual morality.

Whether you wish to learn more about The Philippines because you're chatting up some sweet young thing online and want to meet her in person, or you wish to check out the bar scene, or to swim and sun bathe at the white sand beaches, explore the jungles or oceans teeming with exotic wildlife, or to backpack in the mountains, or a linguist checking out the phenomenon of gay language, Tagalog Down & Dirty is where to start your adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mango Press
• Release date: Aug 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516399246

Book preview

Introduction

Welcome to The Philippines, and to the less reputable, underground words you won’t find in standard books on Tagalog.

Sex, drugs and lots more.

So far as I know, this is the first treatment in book form of the gay language of The Philippines.

I’ve organized this into chapters organized by subject, using English first. In case you encounter a Tagalog word in print or person and just want to look up its meaning, I’ve included a Tagalog to English word list in alphabetical order.

*I* am an American who currently spends a lot of time visiting The Philippines. I first gathered a lot of alleged obscene words from various sources, then I ran them by two friends who are native Tagalog speakers. One of them is woman and the other a gay man. Neither of them have lived sheltered lives. I discarded the terms they hadn’t heard of. The gay man is also my source for information on gay language.

I’m not going to waste your time repeating information you can find in other books on Tagalog. If you’re serious about the language, you’ll already know its letters and how to pronounce them, grammar rules and so on.

I am not a linguist. I have made every effort to be as accurate as possible, but completeness is not possible. You may find that your particular friends prefer different ways to express themselves. Still, this book can be a complement to your standard Tagalog studies outside or inside The Philippines.

First of all, it’s confusing to outsiders to even figure out what Tagalog is.

Tagalog is spoken natively by people living in Central Luzon, which includes the capital city of Manila. Although many other languages are spoken natively in other parts of the country, Tagalog is the basis for the country’s official language, Pilipino (sometimes spelled Filipino).

But Pilipino contains letters Tagalog doesn’t, to accommodate adopting foreign words, and also includes words borrowed from other languages in the country.

Average Filipinos in that area continue to speak what they call Tagalog. I’ve never heard any Filipinos refer to their language as Pilipino.

Unless you know you’re going to spend most of your time in an area where they speak another language, Tagalog is the most useful Filipino language for most foreigners to learn. However, because it is the language of the nation’s capital, the schools and the mass media including movies, most Filipinos understand a fair amount of it even if their native language is something else.

The government may be trying to make Pilipino the standard language, but in practice Filipinos speak the way they wish. Most have only a limited education. Filipinos do not all agree on anything, let alone their language.

There’s also the usual problem with terms that cannot be exactly translated. Tagalog has concepts that don’t