Tagalog Action Sentences: Building Sentences with Verbs

You’ve learned how to describe things and say who you are in the last chapter. Now, let’s add actions to your Tagalog sentences. In this chapter, we’ll introduce action sentences: how to say what someone is doing, what will happen, and who’s involved. But before that, let’s load your vocabulary with nouns and some Tagalog verbs!

Vocabulary

• ako → I
• bata → child
• bilyar → billiards
• pinggan → dish
• aso → dog
• tito → uncle
• damit → clothes
• kumakain → is eating
• kinakain → is eating
• maglalaro → will play
• naghugas → washed
• natutulog → is sleeping
• tatakbo →will run
• maglalaba → will wash clothes

Action Sentences

In English, saying sentences with action goes like this: Actor → Verb → Object (The kid will eat a pancake). The actor — or the doer of the action — comes first. It is then followed by the action, then the object — the thing that receives the action.

In Tagalog, the verb comes first followed by the actor, then the object. Verb → Actor → Object

Verb	Actor	Object	Translation
Kumakain (eating)	ang bata (the kid)	ng pancake. (a pancake)	The kid is eating a pancake.
Maglalaro (will play)	si John (John)	ng bilyar. (billiards)	John will play billiards.

Examples:

• Naghugas ng pinggan si John. → John washed the dishes.
• Natutulog ang aso. → The dog is sleeping.
• Maglalaba ng damit ang tito. → The uncle will wash the clothes.

Not all action sentences follow this pattern — some actions stand alone.

Sentences without Objects

There are also sentences that don’t take objects. These are what textbooks usually call intransitive verbs. Here are some sentences that have Tagalog intransitive verbs.

Examples:

• Natutulog ang aso. → The dog is sleeping.
• Tatakbo ako. → I will run.

Different verb, same meaning

Let’s take this sentence “Kumakain ang bata ng pancake.” because I have some important point to discuss about.

• Kumakain ang bata ng pancake. → The child is eating a pancake.
• Kinakain ng bata ang pancake. → The child is eating the pancake.

Both sentences mean the same thing, but the first sentence translates to the child eating “a” pancake, and the second one translates to the child eating “the” pancake. You know how this works in English. Using “a/an” for introducing something to the conversation, and “the” for referring to that specific thing you both already know.

In Tagalog, we can loosely translate “a/an” to “ng” (pronounced /nang/), and “the” to “ang”. Unlike in English where these particles are only used for talking about the definiteness of the noun, Tagalog takes it up a notch! Tagalog doesn’t just assign these markers to the actor and the object. Even the verb conjugation changes! It’s a grammatical concept that has a stronger influence on how Tagalog sentences are built.

What we’ll be discussing is the concept of focus!

The Concept of Focus

Imagine yourself holding a camera. A camera can capture moments in different ways. It might highlight a single object by blurring everything else in the background. Or it might do the opposite — keeping the background crisp while the object up front becomes blurry.

That’s exactly how focus works in Tagalog sentences.

Just like a camera decides where to direct the viewer’s attention, Tagalog verbs shift focus toward either the doer of the action or the receiver of it. The rest of the sentence may still be present, but the spotlight — the “sharpest part of the shot” — is where the grammar tells us to look.

Let’s illustrate this in action.

English Sentences (No Focus)

If an English sentence were a photo subject, it would go like this:

Tagalog Sentences (With Focus)

Whereas Tagalog would go like this:

The first sentence is what you would call the Actor-focus sentence.

• “ang bata” → is the actor, the focus participant of the sentence, marked with “ang”
• “ng pancake” → is the object, the non-focus participant of the sentence, marked with “ng”
• “kumakain” → is the conjugated verb based on the focus of the sentence, which is the actor.

The second sentence is what you would call the Object-focus sentence.

• “ng bata” → is the actor, but this time, the non-focus participant of the sentence, marked with “ng”
• “ang pancake” → is the object, the focus participant of the sentence, marked with “ang”
• “kinakain” → is the conjugated verb based on the focus of the sentence, which is the object.

You see, Tagalog verbs are kind of but that’s basically how sentences in Tagalog work. Kinda confusing at first, right? Hopefully, the camera focus metaphor captured the concept. These are the most basic sentence constructions that you will hear and use in daily conversations, so it is important to familiarize yourself with these.

Next up, we go in depth with the “ang” and “ng” markers!