Gadling

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the
wall may be the tune in the minds of those eager to participate in St. Patrick’s festivities this coming Friday, but
the buzzword in Baco, Mindoro Oriental,
Philippines is banana’s and lots of them. This weekend, March 18-19, 2006 the area will celebrate the abundance of
banana by cooking loads of it and by hosting banana (saba) inspired street dancing competitions. Now that’s something
I’d like to see.

Today’s word is a Tagalog word used in
the Philippines:

kalye – street

Golets meaning let’s go and take it to the kalye or street for some banana eats. If you’re a
real jet-setter hit Ireland for a beer guzzling good time and then the Philippines for banana’s only if your tummy can
handle such excessive consumption of both in one three-day period.

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.

Past Tagalog words: taon

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.’