Alan Millet – Author
Hello, my name is Alan and I am the author of Learn-Tagalog.com.
I love learning Tagalog and I am fascinated by all things “Filipino”. I find that learning the language has helped me tremendously in my friendships with my Filipino friends, and I enjoy the challenge the language offers.
I have many ideas for this website and I will be working hard to implement those ideas.
I moved to the Philippines permanently in April of 2014. I speak Tagalog evryday and I am also learning another Filipino language which is known as Cebuano.
UPDATE (July 2015): I am now living in the Philippines. I’ve been living here for about 3 1/3 years and love it! (as of November, 2017). I lived in Pampanga province for 1 year and found Tagalog to be VERY useful there. Many of the people I met spoke Kapampangan, Tagalog and English. Kapampangan is very different from Tagalog (at least to me!) and was unintelligible to me. That language is spoken primarily in Pampanga. Pampanga is located just North of the Manila area. Luckily I could converse in Tagalog with anybody there (except very small children). Many of the people I hung around with spoke Tagalog 90% of the time. However, many times I would hear the locals speaking in Kapampangan and couldn’t understand what they were saying.
After 1 year in Pampanga, I moved to Cebu Province. It has required an adjustment for me. Nearly ALL conversations I hear daily are in the Cebuano (Binisaya) language. There is some debate as to what constitutes Bisaya (Binisaya) and what doesn’t. I will leave that to others to discuss.. Google it. 🙂
I am currently learning Cebuano because that is what everyone uses around me daily. If I go to the market or the supermarket or McDonalds, I only hear Cebuano spoken. I CAN ask questions or make comments in Tagalog and it everyone understands me. They know Tagalog (Filipino) but prefer to speak Cebuano. I knew that was the case before I ever moved to the Philippines. Living in the Binisaya-speaking region though really brings the reality home.. living in Cebu province without knowing the local language means I don’t know what is being said around me. I never hear Tagalog spoken except on Television or some radio stations. That’s why I am learning Cebuano.
However, I am still learning Tagalog too. In fact I recently bought a Kindle book from Amazon (affiliate link) that is all about Tagalog. It also provides about 8 hours of audio which I think is great since I don’t HEAR Tagalog spoken around me anymore.
END OF UPDATE
