Taglish / Engalog
Taglish (AKA Engalog). The art of combining Filipino and English words together in order to more conveniently converse.
I, for one, find it very hard to communicate with my fellow pinoys and pinays by using just plain Tagalog, it’s always Taglish. And I’m sure most Filipinos out there feel the same way.
However, I do have one particular pet-peeve when it comes to Taglish, call me crazy, but eventhough it’s just slang, I still think some grammatical rules should apply.
Like past-tense for instance. Whenever you use the prefix "na" or "nag" on any Tagalog word, it means that it happened in the past (e.g. natulog, nawala, nagtanong, nagpunta, etc.). I, therefore, find it very perplexing when I hear or read English verbs in the past-tense preceded by "na/nag" (e.g. na-denied, na-maintained, nag-stayed, nag-proposed).
Just the other day, I heard the funniest Taglish blooper. As I was walking in the streets of Sharjah, I overheard this kabayan talking to someone on his cellphone saying
"Na-overfed ako, eh. Ang dami kong nakain."
I would explain to all of you why I had laughed so hard, but I think the reason is obviously clear.
