
Instead, he’ll show interest by asking her: Pwede ba kitang i-add sa social media? / “Can I add you on social media?”Ī Filipino guy won’t directly say to a girl that he likes her. If you want to keep in touch with a girl you like, what better way than to ask for her phone number? Or, if you’d like to ask for her social media name, you can say: Texting and online messaging are the primary means of communication in the Philippines. “May I have your phone number?” “Is it okay if I ask for your phone number?” If the other person is interested, they might give you their name, and you can take things from there. If you’re interested in a person, you should always start by asking for that person’s name. While courtship in the Philippines often happens between two people who are familiar with each other or have known each other for a long time, it’s not unusual for two strangers to enter courtship and fall in love. But even before that, the young man must know to choose his words carefully in order to avoid rejection. The courtship starts with the manliligaw (the one who courts) asking the nililigawan (the one being courted) out on a date, oftentimes with a chaperone. Men don’t want to come off as mayabang (“presumptuous” or “arrogant”) or presko (the term literally means “fresh,” but in this context, it means “aggressive”), so when they’re interested in a woman, they have to be discreet and somewhat mysterious at first. Unlike in many Western societies, courtship in Philippine culture is indirect and a bit more subdued. The Filipino term for courtship is panliligaw. Confessing Your Affection: Pick-up Lines and More Learn More Important Tagalog Phrases with FilipinoPod101!ġ.Take it One Step Further: “Will You Marry Me?” and More.Falling in Deeper: Saying “I Love You,” and More.Confessing Your Affection: Pick-up Lines and More.And that just scratches the surface of what you’re going to learn in this article! Whether you’re planning to have a romantic relationship with a Filipino or already have one, it’s vital for you to learn some of the most common Tagalog love phrases. So, in modern times, how does one say “I love you,” in Tagalog?ĭespite the gradual changes to courtship and dating in the Philippines, what remains are the utterances used in expressing one’s feelings and the passion behind them. The grand arrival of the internet and the mobile phone eventually gave way to online dating. Courtship slowly shifted from the traditional serenading to phone calls and love letters. In fact, Filipinos are ranked as the fourth most romantic lovers in the Asia-Pacific, despite the reality that the Filipino culture of courtship has significantly evolved over the past several decades.īefore, a young Filipino man would serenade the love of his life to express his feelings for her in a gesture called harana. Use them in your invitations, in your signages, in your vows.ĭownload our 2021-2022 Wedding Suppliers directory here.Filipinos are known to be very romantic. When else would you get the chance to use our beautiful language, aside from expressing your pag-ibig to your sinisinta? On the other end of the spectrum of intensity is that of deep love. The last time you got irritated at something/someone, the first words that entered your brain and got out of your mouth might be words that you wouldn’t want kids to hear. When it comes to expressing deep emotions, the Filipino language stands supreme. But it’s so deep within our culture and sub-cultures, that even thinking about conversing in pure Filipino is silly. Linguists may be frowning at how we use (and maybe abuse) Filipino in how we converse. Our conversations are always in mixed quotes of English and our native tongue, with a lot of deeper words getting lost in translation. I am a Filipino, but years of acing grade school quizzes never quite prepared me to be excellent at both speaking and writing in the language. It is such a beautiful language, and a very difficult one to master, let alone to learn.

I wouldn’t even try to write this blog in Filipino, in respect of the language.
