105 Learning Journal #8

[Noelle Garcia]

Getting into the habit of reading news articles in Tagalog taught me a lot of new words. I would say that I’ve probably learned 50-75 words that I have heard of being spoken, but never really knew what the exact definitions are. It’s funny because a lot of the words sound very violent, and I have always thought they meant something negative but they can mean something as simple as ‘set’. The tagalog word “itinakda” means set, and I always thought that word meant getting stabbed. I learned these words by coming across them, and immediately translating them into English. However, many of the words I learn are a bit sad or negative, because the news tend to focus on stories that are traumatic in a way. Basically there are a lot more sad news to report than happy, exciting ones. I do have realistic goals for vocab acquisition, but I’m realizing that I should probably read more than just the news because if I were to have a conversation with someone in Tagalog and tried to incorporate the words I’ve learned from news articles, our conversations would focus on heavy topics like death, or natural disasters.