In celebration of my one year anniversary here at Gadling I thought I’d take things back to my roots and the place where my insatiable hunger for travel all started. In a sense I’m treating this a little like my birthday. As you may recall from small previous mention, I was born in Angeles City, Philippines into the life of a military brat many moons ago. Departing from the area at the tender age of five months, I regret having no real memory of the place, but hope to return one of these days. There’s this strange magnetic draw that keeps me wandering, wishing, and waiting for the right time to come.
Today’s word is a Tagalog word from the Philippines:
taon – year
Tagalog is one of the major languages in Central Philippines and part of the Austronesian language family. For some reason I was surprised by the number of free GOOD resources available to prospective Tagalog student. Wikipedia has great background info on the lingo as well as related languages, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Waray-Waray, and Cebuano. Mongabay pretty much covers all the really good, up and running links to sites that help teach Tagalog, after checking out a few I’ll do the favor of pointing the best out. The first is an interactive language and Filipino culture resource site tools are provided for both teachers and students. A pretty intense breakdown on local slang and how it is derived can be found here. Travel Lang has word and phrase generator that spits out all the basic words you’d use while visiting for a week, month or ‘taon.’