Lesson 004

Sampung Mga Daliri (Ten Fingers)

There is a Filipino nursery rhyme titled 'Sampung Mga Daliri', which is literally 'Ten Fingers'.

This would be appropriate, as our lesson for today would be numbers, which is important in everyday conversation.

Like English, Tagalog sentences are normally constructed with the sequence, adjective-noun. Although the reverse is also true. Let us look an an example.

(1) One to Ten

One - Isa
Two - Dalawa
Three - Tatlo
Four - Apat
Five - Lima
Six - Anim
Seven - Pito
Eight - Walo
Nine - Siyam
Ten - Sampu

Ten Fingers - 'Sampung Mga Daliri'

'Daliri' is finger, to make it plural we add the word 'mga' (pronounced ma-nga).

But the term 'sampung daliri' is also acceptable.

'Sampu' is ten, 'ng' is added to indicate that the adjective is describing the succeeding word. Now the rule is if the adjective ends in a vowel, then 'ng" is added to make one word.

If the adjective ends in a consonant. Like in 'siyam', we will not add 'ng' to make one word (because it looks weird).

Instead the rule is to add a second word 'na'. So nine fingers in Tagalog is 'siyam na mga daliri' or 'siyam na daliri'.

(2) 11 to 19

Continuing the count is not that hard, to do this we add the word 'labing'. So 11 is 'labing isa', 12 is 'labing dalawa and so on.

20 is Dalawampu

(3) 21 to 29 - Dalawampu't isa and so on.

30 is, yes Tatlumpu

(4) 31 to 99 - Talumpu't isa and so on.

40 - Apatnapu
50 - Limangpu
60 - Animnapu
70 - Pitumpu
80 - Walongpu
90 - Siyamnapu

(5) 100 - 1,000,000

100 - Isang daan (or sandaan)
200 - Dalawang daan
300 - Tatlong daan
400 - Apat na raan
500 - Limang daan
600 - Anim na raan
700 - Pitong daan
800 - Walong daan
900 - Siyam na raan

1,000 - Isang libo (sanlibo)
2,000 - dalawang libo

And so on

1,000,000 - Isang milyon
2,000,000 - Dalawang milyon

Summary

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