Page 74 - Tagalog for Beginners: An Introduction to Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines

that “Coffee likes Clara.”

II. The words “gusto” and “ayaw” and pronouns
The words gusto and ayaw are used with the possessive pronouns ko, mo, niya,
namin, natin, ninyo, and nila.
Thus we say, “Gusto ko ng kape.”

Do not use the pronouns ako, ikaw or ka, siya, kami, tayo, kayo, and sila.
The sentence “Gusto ako ng kape.” means that “Coffee likes me.”

III. The marker “ng” instead of the marker “ang”
The use of ng instead of “ang” in the “coffee” dialogue can best be explained by
equating it with English sentences:

“Gusto mo ba ng kape?” Would you like (some) coffee?” In this sentence, by
using the marker ng, “coffee” is marked as the object of the sentence.
If we replace ng with the marker ang, then the meaning changes: “Gusto mo
ba ang kape?” means “Do you like the coffee?”

IV. Studying the verbs umiinom drinking, kumakain eating, and bumibisita visits

— subject focus using the prefix um
In Filipino, verbs are inflected for aspect, rather than tense. Aspect shows if
the action is completed, incompleted, or contemplated.

In this lesson, we have introduced three verbs, all incompleted: umiinom,
kumakain, and bumibisita.
• To form the completed verb, we take the root word and add the prefix um
before the first vowel.
• To form the incompleted verb, we take the first two syllables of the completed
form and add the root word.
• To form the contemplated verb, we take the first syllable of the root word, and
repeat it.

Root Completed Incompleted Contemplated
inom uminom uniinom iinom

kain kumain kumakain kakain
bisita bumisita bumibisita bibisita

EXAMPLES : Uminom ako ng tubig.

Umiinom ako ng tubig.
Iinom ako ng tubig.