In my recent video comparing Indonesian and Tagalog, I mentioned that Spanish has had a big impact on Tagalog vocabulary, since the Philippines was controlled by Spain for hundreds of years. An estimated 20% -33% of Tagalog vocabulary is of Spanish origin. This vocabulary is deeply rooted in Tagalog, and includes many extremely basic and common everyday words.
Tagalog words of Spanish origin in the video
If you saw the recent video, you’ve already seen a couple such words:
Mesa and lamesa which mean “table”. They come from the Spanish word for “table”: mesa. I find it funny that the variant “lamesa” includes the Spanish definite article la, even though the Tagalog word isn’t necessarily definite.
Estudyante meaning “student”, from Spanish estudiante.
Libro meaning “book”, from Spanish libro.
Eskwelahan, meaning “school”, from Spanish escuela (“school”) + an – a Tagalog suffix that creates a noun referring to a place. There’s an additional “h” between the two parts because “escuela” ends in a vowel.
Spanish vocabulary with Tagalog word patterns (morphology)
In the above example (eskwelahan) you can see that Spanish loanwords are affected by Tagalog morphology. In other words, some Spanish words fit into Tagalog word patterns and become part of larger Tagalog words. More examples:
Trabaho, meaning “job” or “work”, from Spanish trabajo. It also functions as a verb root and gets conjugated just like a Tagalog verb, as in Nagtatrabaho siya (“He is working”).
Intindi, meaning “understanding”, from Spanish entiende (the 3rd p singular present tense of entender “to understand“). It’s also conjugated as a verb: Hindi ko maintindihan. “I can’t understand”.
Everyday Tagalog words of Spanish origin
Gusto is a very common word used with the meaning of “want”, as in Gusto ko (“I want”). It comes from the Spanish noun gusto meaning “taste” or “liking”. It’s a noun in Tagalog too and isn’t conjugated.
Pamilya meaning “family”, from Spanish familia. Notice that the “f” became a “p” in Tagalog, because loanwords usually change in pronunciation to fit into the Tagalog phonological system.
Kusina, meaning “kitchen”, from Spanish cocina.
Kotse, meaning “car”, from Spanish coche, which means “car, coach, or carriage”. Back when the word was borrowed hundreds of years ago there were no cars, but its meaning evolved along with the Spanish word.
Oras, meaning “time” or “hour”, from Spanish horas meaning “hours”. In Spanish “horas” is plural, but the Tagalog word doesn’t have a plural meaning. Why didn’t they borrow the singular form hora? Good question!
Medyas, meaning “socks”, from Spanish medias – the plural of media (“sock”).This is another word that was borrowed in its plural form, but in Tagalog isn’t inherently plural. In Tagalog you can say mga medyas to explicitly express the plural.
Lugar, meaning “place”, from Spanish lugar (“place”).
Kuwento, meaning “story”, from Spanish cuento, with the same meaning.
Diyos, meaning “God”, from Spanish Dios.
Spanish words with a different meaning in Tagalog
Pasensya, meaning “sorry”, from Spanish paciencia (“patience”).
Siguro, meaning “maybe”, from Spanish seguro meaning “sure”. Isn’t that funny? The Spanish word for sure means maybe (in other words, not for sure) in Tagalog!
Spanish function words in Tagalog
Pero, a conjunction meaning “but”, from Spanish pero (“but”). I find it a little surprising that such a ubiquitous function word that is constantly used to connect sentences is actually a loan word! Another one like that is:
O, which means “or”. It comes from the Spanish word o with the same meaning and function. Sa Marso o sa Oktubre – “In March or October”.
Let me stop listing individual words for a minute and I’ll let you know about a few sets of words.
Spanish numbers in Tagalog
Spanish numbers are used in Tagalog for certain things, like telling the time and talking about prices. Native Tagalog numbers are used for other things.
Uno (“one” – from Spanish uno)
Dos (“two” – from Spanish dos)
Tres (“three” – from Spanish tres)
Kwatro (“four” – from Spanish cuatro)
Singko (“five” – from Spanish cinco)
Sais (“six” – from Spanish seis)
Syete (“seven” – from Spanish siete)
Otso (“eight” – from Spanish ocho)
Nuwebe (“nine” – from Spanish nueve)
Diyes (“ten” – from Spanish diez)
Spanish words for months of the year in Tagalog
The months of the year in Tagalog are also of Spanish origin. We saw two of them before (Marso and Oktubre). Here are all of them in order:
Enero (“January” – from Spanish enero)
Pebrero (“February” – from Spanish febrero)
Marso (“March” – from Spanish marzo)
Abril (“April” – from Spanish abril)
Mayo (“May” – from Spanish mayo)
Hunyo (“June” – from Spanish junio)
Hulyo (“July” – from Spanish julio)
Agosto (“August” – from Spanish agosto)
Setyembre (“September” – from Spanish septiembre)
Oktubre (“October” – from Spanish octubre)
Nobyembre (“November” – from Spanish noviembre)
Disyembre (“December” – from Spanish diciembre)
Spanish words for days of the week in Tagalog
The days of the week in Tagalog also come from Spanish:
Linggo (“Sunday”, possibly from Spanish domingo, but more likely from Malay “minggu” which come from Portuguese domingo)
Lunes (“Monday” from Spanish lunes)
Martes (“Tuesday” from Spanish martes)
Miyerkules (“Wednesday” from Spanish miércoles)
Huwebes (“Thursday” from Spanish jueves)
Biyernes (“Friday” from Spanish viernes)
Sabado (“Saturday” from Spanish sábado)
In all three sets of words, the words are basically the same as in Spanish, except that some of them are spelled a little differently to match Tagalog spelling conventions.
There are many more examples we could look at. Thousands. And it’s not only Tagalog that was influenced by Spanish, but the languages of the Philippines in general. The Visayan languages such as Cebuano, for example, contain even more Spanish words than Tagalog does. But that’s a story for a different day!
If you’re interested in learning Spanish, click here to visit SpanishPod101.
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