I first became interested in Tagalog because I met a Filipina online and I was serious about my relationship with her. We texted and called for about a month before I bought my first Tagalog text book. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
I tried studied about an hour a day for several months and tried many different apps and books but I felt like my progress was so slow. I was discouraged and I though, maybe I’m bad with languages. So I did a little research.
What I found out was that The U.S. Foreign Service Institute classifies, Tagalog is a Category III language due to the differences in linguistics and culture. What that means is that you can expect it to take between 1000 and 1200 hours of classroom study to reach ‘proficiency’.
In other words. If you study one hour a day every day it can take 3-3 ½ years… more or less. I must be slow because I think I’ve put in about 1000 hours and I can only hold very simple conversations still. But maybe my methods weren’t optimal.
Hopefully I can give you some tips and insights here and save you some time.
The first thing you should decide is whether you should bother with it at all. Seriously. It may not be worth it. Think about how you plan to use the language and how much effort you are willing to commit.
The Filipino language is a modernized version of Tagalog. The terms are almost interchangeable but the usage of ‘Filipino’ suggests a language with a national identity, while Tagalog is more closely related to the Tagalog ethnic peoples of Luzon.
