Learn Tagalog 17

So far in the videos we’ve encountered only Ang phrases, such as ka, ang babae, si Jen and ito.

Now, these Ang phrases have a corresponding Ng phrase and a corresponding Sa phrase. Let’s look at the Ng phrases. For ka it’s mo, for ang babae it’s ng babae, for si Jen it’s ni Jen and for ito it’s nito.

And the corresponding Sa phrases are sa iyo, sa babae, kay Jen and dito.

Let’s look at an example of how they are used.

 Kumain  ng  isda’  ang  turista  sa  beach. 

Literally:  Ate  [Ng marker]  fish  the  tourist  on  beach. 

In natural English: The tourist ate (some) fish on the beach.

Here, you can see that the tourist is an Ang phrase, the fish is a Ng phrase and the beach is a Sa phrase. With the verb kumain, the Ang phrase is the doer of the action. That means, the tourist is the one who ate something. The Ng phrase is the thing that was eaten. In other words, it’s the object of the action. The Sa phrase here, is the place where the action happened. So we know the tourist ate fish on the beach.

What happens if we reverse the Ang and Ng markers?

Then we get:

 Kumain  ang  isda’  ng  turista  sa  beach. 

Literally:  Ate  the  fish  [Ng marker]  tourist  on  beach. 

In natural English: The fish ate a tourist on the beach.

As you can see, the meaning changes depending on which phrases are used.

You can download a summary of Tagalog markers and pronouns with their Ang, Ng and Sa forms at: learningtagalog.com/downloads/tagalog_markers_and_pronouns.pdf