A blend of Tagalog and English.
Taglish has become the everyday language not only of the educated and middle class in the Philippines, but of practically every Filipino on earth. This is due not only to the pervasiveness of English in mass media as the world’s primary language of communication, but also to the flexibility of Tagalog sentence structure, which easily allows the incorporation of English vocabulary.
Standard Tagalog sentence:
Kumain tayo sa Wendy’s.
Let’s eat at Wendy’s.
Shortened sentence in common use:
Kain tayo sa Wendy’s.
Colloquial variations:
Mag-Wendy’s tayo.
Wendy’s tayo.
Stylized Taglish variation:
Eat tayo sa Wendy’s.
More examples of Taglish phrases:
Sleep na me.
I’m going to sleep now.
Suot mo gift ko.
Wear my gift.
Like mo ba?
Do you like it?
Like mo ba ‘ko?
Do you like me?
When po ‘to?
When was this?
A: Where na u?
B: Dito na Me.
Note that Philippine English is characterized by the use of incorrect prepositions. For example, school textbooks on translation teach Filipino students to say “run over a page” though Americans use the preposition “through” in the phrasal verb “run through a page” (peruse quickly).
✅ run through pages
❌ run over pages
