Learn Tagalog 02

Let’s start with the Tagalog /k/, /p/ and /t/. Ka, pa, ta. These three consonants are pronounced without a puff of air after them. So they’re like the /k/, /p/ and /t/ in skill, spill and still. And not the ones in kill, pill and till, which have a puff of breath after them. So again, ka, pa and ta.

Then you have the sound /ng/. Nga. This sound can also be found at the beginning of a word in Tagalog. For example, ngayon, which means today or now. You can practice this initial /ng/ sound by saying ringing…, ri… nging.

Then there’s the Tagalog /r/. Ra. It’s similar to the double /t/ in better in most accents of American English, or it can be slightly rolled. Ra.

Now, let’s quickly go through the consonant sounds you’ll find in native Tagalog words:

ba, da, ga
ha, ka, la
ma, na, nga
pa, ra, sa
ta, wa, ya.

There’s actually another consonant sound in Tagalog, which is called the glottal stop, but we’ll cover that in a later video.

Lastly, let’s pronounce the Tagalog /ll/ and what we call en-ye in Tagalog. These are found in words borrowed from Spanish.

lla – it’s like an /l/ followed by a /y/
and ña – a bit like the /gn/ in lasagna