Learn how to pronounce different letters in Filipino correctly
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Betsey: Kamusta! Hi everyone, I’m Betsey. |
| Becky: Hello! I’m Becky, and welcome to FilipinoPod101.com. This is Pronunciation Series, Lesson 1 - The Pronunciation of Consonants in Filipino. |
| Becky: In the Basic Bootcamp series, we introduced some basic Filipino pronunciations, and gave you a glimpse of it, but with this series, we’d like to take you on a journey to mastering your pronunciation. |
Lesson focus |
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| Betsey: That’s right. In this first lesson, we will go through the pronunciation of consonants in Filipino. |
| Becky: We’ve talked before about the Filipino alphabet, known as Abakada. |
| Betsey: Let’s refresh our listeners’ memories though. The initial Abakada has five vowels - A, E, I, O, and U. And it has fifteen consonants - B, K, D, G, H, L, M, N, Ñ (enye), NG, P, R, S, T, W and Y. |
| Becky: In this lesson, we’ll go through the consonants. But don’t worry about it too much, because if you remember, there are only a few differences between the pronunciation of Filipino consonants from the English consonants. |
| Betsey: So first, we’ll give a word in English that contains the same sound, followed by an example word in Filipino that has that sound. First up is the Filipino alphabet B |
| Becky: This sounds like the English B, as in “Bath” |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Bahay, which means "House” (slowly) Bahay. |
| Becky: Next up is K as in “Kitchen” |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Kain, which means "Eat”, slowly Kain |
| Becky: Next is D as in "Dog" |
| Betsey: An example is Dugo, which means "Blood” |
| Becky: Next, G as in "Get" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Gutom which means "Hungry” |
| Becky: Next, H as in "Hole" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Hangin which means "Air” |
| Becky: L as in "Lamp" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Likod which means "Back” |
| Becky: M as in "Mobile" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Mahal which means "Love” |
| Becky: Next is N as in “None” The Spanish ‘enye’ (Ñ) or N with wave mark or tilde on the top is also used, but mostly for names or locations that come from Spanish. |
| Betsey: A Filipino example using N is Nakaw, which means "Steal” |
| Becky: N-G as in "Sung" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example of NG [say the sound here] is Ngipin, which means "Teeth” |
| Betsey: Now, we have talked about most of the consonants and their pronunciations. As you can see, most of the Filipino letters sound the same as their English equivalents. |
| Becky: But there are some consonants or consonant groups that don’t sound the same as in English. The consonant N-G is one of them. |
| Betsey: There’s a Filipino word that is just ‘N-G’ This is the object marker in Filipino. It is pronounced “Nang” even though it’s written just NG. |
| Becky: Then we have.. |
| Betsey: “Ang” or A-N-G. which is the subject marker. This might not be as hard to pronounce, because the “ng” consonant is placed at the end of the word like in English words. |
| Becky: And what’s the next one? |
| Betsey: We also have the word “Mga” or M-G-A. It’s pronounced as “Manga”. This means “Approximately” or “About”. It can also indicate a plural of a noun. So for example, you can use it to say “My friends” or “Mga kaibigan ko”. (slowly) “Mga kaibigan ko”. You can see the first word was pronounced as ‘Manga’ even though it was written as just M-G-A. |
| Becky: Ok. Let’s go back to other consonants. The next is “P” as in "Pig" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Pabor which means "Favor” |
| Becky: Next is R as in "Run" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Rinig which means "Hear”. Remember this “R” sounds more like the Spanish “R”, where you roll your tongue. |
| Becky: And next, S as in "Sun" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Sira which means "Broken” |
| Becky: T as in "Tea" |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Talim which means "Sharp” |
| Becky: W as in "Wave” |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Wagi which means "Victory” |
| Becky: Y as “Yes” |
| Betsey: A Filipino example is Yabang which means "Conceited” |
| Becky: Ok, so those are just a few examples of how these consonants are pronounced. |
| Becky: Listeners, you should use this list to practice saying these consonants! |
| Betsey: They’re not very hard, so we’re sure you can master them in no time. |
Outro |
| Becky: Okay, that’s it for this lesson. To reinforce what you’ve learned in this lesson, don’t forget to check the lesson notes. |
| Betsey: Thanks for listening, everyone. |
| Betsey: See you next time. Paalam! |
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