Please continue learning and don't get intimidated. Dedication and diligence is the first step to learning anything. Pronunciations are relatively easy as we only use short vowel sounds and no silent letters. Just pronounce as how you read it. Since you already know Spanish, that would be a good jump start as it has some similarities with Filipino. Italki.com is really useful tool in learning languages especially if you can find a learning buddy whom you can talk and converse with online. Much better if you can meet a Filipino at your place. Filipinos are practically anywhere in the world- and were really friendly and accommodating. It would also be handy if you can secure a copy of an English-Filipino dictionary. Learn few words a day and you won't notice that you've already built a decent Filipino vocabulary. Thank you for taking interest in learning our language! I wish you the best!

I share your pain. I have been trying to learn Tagalog for a while. I have found the following obstacles: Teaching Tagalog to native English speakers is not a very mature discipline. So it is difficult to find instruction that addresses the difficulties a native English speaker may have. Listening to Tagalog broadcasts does not help much because they speak too fast. A language teacher who can keep you focused on the main things to learn is difficult to find. Although many Filipinos speak English, they do not speak it well enough to explain the confusing aspects of Tagalog to an English speaker. If you can find an instructor, make sure he/she speaks English almost as well as you do. That's difficult because although there are many Americans of Filipino descent who speak Tagalog, they usually don't know Tagalog well enough because they just learned it informally within their family. All I can suggest is to take it slowly, building a vocabulary, and doing daily reading of small articles in Filipino web sites. Good Luck

Books will guide you, but Filipino (used to be Pilipino before 1982) is a little bit different from Tagalog but Filipino is derived from Tagalog. Filipino can mean it is the people living in the Philippines or the language. The differentiation was quite clear before 1982. Before then, Pilipino means the national language and Filipino is the general name for people living in the Philippines. Like other languages, there is a formal way and the colloquial way. The colloquial way is usually the Tagalog language but not always. The formal way is the Pilipino (I prefer to call our language that way to differentiate it from the people). It would help you more to memorize it in phrases. Like when sombody says "What's up" in English, they don't literally mean what is up directly above you but it means "What is new?". Like English, Pilipino has a lot of idiomatic expressions. Our language is somewhat different just like Japanese which have particles as a part of a sentence, in ours, these are linkers. But even then, we really do appreciate your interest in trying to learn the language. Don't worry, we're just around. Cheers!!! Tuss!!! Ta da!!! Ciao!!! Alors!!!

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