Learn Tagalog 15

Do you remember these sentences from one of the previous videos?

Merong kotse ang doktor.
Maraming kaibigan si Jen.
Walang bisikleta iyon.

Well, none of them contain enclitic words.

Now, let’s have a look at what happens with enclitic words.

What if we wanted to combine merong kotse with ako, and ako is enclitic?

Then we get Meron akong kotse. I have a car.

Notice that ako now comes second and that the linker in merong is now attached to ako instead. Meron akong kotse.

Next example:

Maraming kaibigan with ka, and ka is enclitic.

This becomes Marami kang kaibigan. You have many friends.

The same thing happens, the linker in maraming is moved to ka. Marami kang kaibigan.

Last example:

Walang bisikleta with siya gives Wala’ siyang bisikleta. He or she doesn’t have a bicycle.

Again, the same happens. Siya takes the -ng linker instead of wala’.

Many of these enclitic words are very common. So it often happens that you have more than one in a row. For example:

Wala’  ka  na  bang  bisikleta?

Literally: Have no  you  anymore  [question word with a linker]  bicycle?

In natural English: You don’t have a bicycle anymore?

The linker -ng went all the way to the last enclitic word ba. Note that the enclitic words follow a particular order. Ka has the highest priority. You can see this in the table in the PDF you downloaded.