How to teach Pronouns in Tagalog (Panghalip)

Filipino kids don’t have it easy.  They have to master English due to the demands of our increasing globalizing world at the same time they are expected to be fluent at Filipino and most learn basic (or intermediate depending on the school) Chinese.

It’s a lot for kids to handle so as parents we should help where we can.

I found that my kids had a terrible time learning Filipino pronouns or panghalip.

First, there are more pronouns in Tagalog than there are in English.  There are so many different pronouns.  A different pronoun to use for whether speaker, spoken to or someone else entirely is involved.   Aside from the speaker and the subject of the pronoun, there’s a different set of pronouns for subject or object of the sentence.

At the time, my son was struggling with it so I decided to make summaries to help him understand the uses of the different forms of Panghalip.

I did these drawings and summaries a few years ago but I still whip it out from time to time until now.

Thinking this may help some parents out there so I’m posting it here.

NOTE:  The characters with the speech bubble are the people directly conversing with each other.  The speaker of the sentence is indicated. The characters without the speech bubble aren’t in the conversation but are being talked about.  The trio of stick figures indicates plural.

Panghalip Panao

Panghalip Paari are possessive pronouns.