Filipino grammar

Every grammar guide of Lingora’s Filipino A1 course, with examples you can listen to.

01Word Order: The Predicate Comes FirstTagalog builds a sentence the other way round from English. The predicate — the part that says something — comes first, and the thing it is said about…
02The Three Markers: 'ang', 'ng', and 'sa'Tagalog does not use word order to show who did what to whom. It uses three little markers placed before a noun. Learning these three is the single most…
03Marking People's Names: 'si', 'ni', 'kay'Personal names do not take ang, ng, or sa. They take their own parallel set of markers. The three-way split is exactly the same — only the words change.
04The Inversion Marker 'ay'Ay is one of the most misunderstood words in Tagalog. It looks like "is", "am", "are" — and it is not. Tagalog has no verb "to be". Ay is a piece of…
05The Linker: 'na' and '-ng'Whenever one word describes another in Tagalog, a linker must join them. English glues "new house" together with nothing at all; Tagalog insists on a…
06Personal Pronouns: The 'ang' SetJust as nouns take ang, ng, or sa, pronouns come in three matching sets — one for each marker. The ang-set is the one that stands in for the phrase the…
07Personal Pronouns: The 'ng' SetThe ng-set stands in for a person named after ng. These pronouns do two jobs that English keeps completely apart: they say "my", and they say "by me".…
08Personal Pronouns: The 'sa' SetThe sa-set is the third and last, and these are the pronouns that follow sa. They cover "to me", "for you", "at their place" — and in a second use they…
09Two Kinds of 'We': 'tayo' and 'kami'English has one word for "we" and it is permanently ambiguous. If a colleague says "We're going for lunch", you cannot tell whether you are invited.…
10The Two-in-One Pronoun 'kita'Kita is a small oddity with no English parallel: a single word that packs in both "I" as the doer and "you" as the one affected. Where English needs two…
11Where Small Words Go: The Second-Position RuleTagalog has a family of short words — pronouns and particles — that cannot stand wherever they like. They are enclitics: they must lean on something. The…
12Verb Focus: The Central IdeaThis is the concept that makes Tagalog feel unlike any European language. A Tagalog verb does not just name an action — its shape also announces which…
13Actor Focus: '-um-' and 'mag-'These are the two workhorse actor-focus affixes. Both put the doer in the spotlight, so the doer takes ang (or an ang-pronoun), and any object is marked…
14Actor Focus: 'ma-' and 'mang-'Besides -um- and mag-, two more prefixes put the doer in focus. They are less common but cover a large slice of everyday vocabulary, including sleeping,…
15Object Focus: The '-in' Verbs-in is the most common object-focus affix. It puts the thing acted on in the spotlight: that thing takes ang, and the doer drops to the ng-set.
16Object Focus: The 'i-' Verbsi- is the second object-focus prefix. Like -in, it spotlights the thing acted on — but it favours a particular kind of action: one where an object is…
17Directional Focus: The '-an' VerbsThe suffix -an spotlights the participant that the action is aimed at — the receiver, the beneficiary, or the surface or place affected. It is the affix…
18Choosing a Focus: Which Verb Form to Usekumain and kainin both mean "eat", so the real question is which one you actually say. These are the practical decision rules.
19Verb Aspect: The Four FormsTagalog verbs do not have tenses. They have aspect — a system that marks whether an action has begun and whether it has finished, rather than when it sat…
20Building the Aspects: Actor-Focus VerbsHere are the actual recipes. Two operations do all the work: marking that the action has started, and reduplicating to mark that it is not finished.
21Building the Aspects: Object-Focus VerbsObject-focus verbs mark "the action has started" differently from actor-focus verbs: instead of turning m into n, they insert the infix -in-.…
22Ability and Chance: 'maka-' and 'ma-'Tagalog has a dedicated set of forms for "can", "manage to", and "happen to". They are called potentive verbs, and they carry a second shade of meaning…
23Causatives: Having Someone Do SomethingTagalog builds "have someone do it", "make someone do it", and "let someone do it" directly into the verb, with the element pa-. The result is a sentence…
24Existence and Possession: 'may', 'mayroon', and 'wala'Tagalog uses one small family of words for both "there is" and "have". They are not verbs, they take no aspect, and choosing between may and mayroon is…
25Adjectives: The 'ma-' Prefix and Describing NounsA very large share of Tagalog adjectives are built from a noun root plus the prefix ma-. Once you spot the pattern, dozens of words stop being separate…
26Intensity: 'napaka-', 'sobrang', and 'masyado'Tagalog has several ways to say "very", and they are not interchangeable. Some are neutral, one is strongly negative, and one of them changes the marker…
27Comparison: 'mas', 'kaysa', and 'pinaka-'Tagalog does not change the shape of an adjective to make it comparative the way English adds "-er". It puts a separate word in front, which makes the…
28Plurals: 'mga' and ReduplicationTagalog nouns do not change their form for plural. Instead a separate marker is placed in front, and — crucially — it is often left out when the…
29Numbers: Two Counting SystemsFilipino runs two complete sets of numbers side by side: the native Tagalog set and a Spanish-derived set. Both are in daily use, and they are not…
30Telling the TimeTime is the one area where Spanish-derived numbers are not optional. Filipinos tell the clock almost entirely in Spanish forms, so this is a small closed…
31Demonstratives: 'ito', 'iyan', and 'iyon'English splits "this" and "that" two ways. Tagalog splits three ways, and the middle term has no English equivalent: it means "that, near you".
32Location Words: 'dito', 'diyan', 'doon', and 'nasa'Saying where something is uses a small set of words that mirror the three-way demonstrative system. Once you know ito, iyan, iyon, the location words…
33Yes/No Questions with 'ba'Turning a Tagalog statement into a yes/no question is refreshingly simple. You do not reorder anything, you do not add a helping verb, and the intonation…
34Question WordsTagalog question words come at the front of the sentence, and most of them are followed by ang and a phrase. Understanding that structure explains why…
35Negation: 'hindi', 'wala', and 'huwag'Tagalog uses three different negative words, and choosing between them is not a matter of style — each one negates a different kind of sentence. Getting…
36The Particles 'na' and 'pa'Na and pa are a matched pair of tiny words that carry a surprising amount of meaning. They tell you whether a situation has changed or is still going,…
37The Particles 'lang', 'din', 'naman', and 'kaya'Beyond na and pa, a handful of enclitic particles colour almost every Tagalog sentence. They rarely translate into a single English word, but leaving…
38Politeness: 'po' and Speaking RespectfullyPoliteness in Filipino is not optional decoration — it is woven into the grammar, and neglecting it comes across as genuinely rude. Fortunately the main…
39Requests and CommandsTagalog builds commands out of the plain infinitive, and it makes them polite with a prefix rather than a word like "please". Because most commands act…
40'ng' or 'nang'?These two words are pronounced identically — both are said nang. In speech you never have to choose. The moment you write, you do, and this is one of the…
41Pseudo-verbs: 'gusto', 'kailangan', 'dapat', and 'puwede'A small group of very common words behave like verbs in meaning but take no affixes and have no aspect forms. Grammarians call them pseudo-verbs. They…
42Relative Clauses with 'na'To say "the man who is running" or "the book that I bought", Tagalog uses the same linker you already know from adjectives: na, or -ng after a vowel or…
43Conjunctions: Linking IdeasConjunctions are among the easiest parts of Tagalog: most are single invariable words placed exactly where English would put them. Here are the ones you…
44Prepositions and the 'sa' PhraseTagalog has very few true prepositions. Instead, sa does the work of a dozen English ones, and more precise meanings are built by putting a noun in front…