The Philippines

The Tagalog alphabet has 20 letters: They are: a, b, k, d, e, g, h, i, l, m,n, ng, o, p , r, s, t, u, w, y. In reading the alphabet... you would read it as a 'short' letter, i.e., as in the a of bat. There are no 'long' letters, i.e., as in the a of bathe or the o of bow. Read the alphabet as follows: ah, bah, kah, dah, eh, gah, hah, ih, lah, mah, nah, ngah, oh, pah, rah, sah, tah, u (or oo), wah, yah. It is important to note that the letters k, t and p are not aspirated and should not be pronounced as you would in English.

The vowels are 'a', as in the 'a' of bat; 'e', as in the 'e' of bet; 'i', as in the the 'ee' of beet; 'o', as in the 'o' of long; and 'u', as in the 'oo' of loo. There are no long sounds like those found in Finnish, Hawaiian, Thai... where you pronounce the vowel a time longer than you would normally pronounce it.

There are two consonant combinations which are used to pronounce the English CH and J. For CH, it is 'ts'. Try to pronounce an unaspirated t and then connect it with s immediately. For J, it is 'dy', e.g., JEEP=dyip.

The English alphabet is not used unless there is a borrowed word. Most often, the pronounciation and spelling would have been changed to the Filipino alphabet. k and s replaces c, q and s. p replaces f and ph. The Spanish ñ is pronounced as a 'ny' and the Spanish ll is pronounced as 'ly'. Note that the 'll' does not produce the sound of 'y' as it is supposed to in the Spanish language.

As discussed, the position of the stress in a word is important. Below is a list of possible positions.

Acute Stress on the last syllable: talagá

Penultimate Stress on the syllable before the last: (No accent mark): aral

Stress of Syllable before the penultimate in combination with the penultimate: táhanan

Stress of Syllable before the penultimate in combination with the acute stress: kágawarán

Glottal end vowel but penultimate in stress: binatà

Glottal stress: bagâ.