Basic Tagalog for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs

My Tita wants me to learn so then I can visit her home town. Also the food is amazing! I love adobo and Lumpia. Definitely recommend this book if you want to learn tagalog.

For the low price, this book is worthwhile even for beginners. however, the beginner should use this as a reference and jump into it once some foundations are grasped. And do the written exercises! The ideal beginning book for me, "Beginning Tagalog; a course for speakers of English", is an audiolingual textbook from 1965 that I just happened to find gathering dust in my university library (no luck finding the original reel-to-reel tapes!). I wish I had Aspillera's book as a reference when I plowed through this textbook, as all the tourist phrasebooks are useless. Though I had read "Basic Tagalog" cover-to-cover earlier this year, I put it in my backpack this summer, so that I could do some of the written exercises while living in the RP. I strongly recommend doing this, as it helps reinforce grammar. Also, speak out loud to yourself, and your understanding will also grow exponentially. BTW, I met one westerner in Taiwan who learned Tagalog from the Aspillera book, and raved about it. Since he was quite fluent, I took this as evidence that language learning is what you make of it. Don't blame the books, just be thankful they are out there! The subtitle of this book is "for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs"; at the end of the summer my Visayan wife took this book home to Mindanao. She told me that the design of the book really is helpful to Pilipinos whose mothertongue is not Pilipino, despite the language training they get in school. In sum, this book is very valuable for the serious learner of Tagalog, the basis of the official Pilipino language. Save your money by buying this instead of any of the tourist phrasebooks that might tempt you. Mabuhay!

Lived and worked among the people in the Philippines in places as diverse as Metro Manila and Brookes Pointe, Palawan. This is the BEST BOOK AVAILABLE if you are seeking to learn how to SPEAK Tagalog. It gives you the basic speaking patterns, sentence structure, and enough vocabulary to get you into (and out of) trouble.

I bought an edition of this book in 1993 after my first two visits to the Philippines.I picked it up almost every day,which is an unusual thing for me to do with a book,however because of the teachings and systematic way the book is set out it made for very enjoyable learning. Even more enjoyable than learning from the book,is getting to put what I have learned into practise during subsequent visits to the Philippines.The filipino people are quick to encourage someone who they can see has put in an effort to learn their language.This book makes that effort worthwhile !

Well, I have family who speaks tagalog, and they wont teach me a thing, so I took it upon myself to learn the native language of my loved one, and now she is able to speak to me in simple phrases and I understand. I even know when her and her friends talk about me! This book is great to learn simple phrases and to expand your vocabulary of tagalog if you are also exposed to it often. Its just a great book!

As a foreigner to the Philippines who had to learn Tagalog as a second language, this book helped me the most. The lessons are simple, clear, and easy to apply in your everyday conversations. Make this the first book you buy, and it may be the last.