A Philipino friend of mine taught me this Tagalog sentence.
Gusto mo ng _______ko? (eg sweets)
Do you want some of my _______?
ps: i'm not sure if it is "gusto", but it sounde like to me.
The rest she spelled it out for me.
1. I asked her what does "ng" means, and she said if without "ng" it would sound like the person came from the mountains or like a child just learning Tagalog. Can anyone explain what does it mean (and the function?)
2. can anyone be so kind as to give me a simple explanation of how Tagalog's grammar is like? I tried reading the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagalog_grammar and it gave me a headache.. What does "ergative-absolutive language" means? (I assume "nominative-accusative language" means something like "subject-object language"?)
3. When I asked her how do "ko" and "mo" function, she told me that they are attached to the back of nouns to mean possessive (like, "my sweets"?) I had the impression that they are like end inflections added, and sometimes with infix -a- added between (like "sweetako"??) ok.. i am confused.
4. I commented to her that "gusto mo" sounds Spanish to me (though i have never learnt Spanish), she said that Tagalog and Spanish are related. Really? Did Tagalog come from Spanish or something?
Tagalog seems like a really interesting language.
I have always wrongly thought that it's something like Malay or Indonesian language, but when I heard her converse with other Filipinos, it sounds different..