Hello,

Hello,
George here. I lived in Manila twice, once in the late 1970s and then in the mid-1980's when I was assigned there by the bank I was working for. I have long been fascinated by Tagalog because of its linguistic relationship with Bahasa Indonesia, a fellow member of the Austronesian family of languages in which I am fully fluent and literate. I started studying Tagalog even before I went to Manila in 1977 and now translate it professionally. I guess I am more in the advanced level of Tagalog, but just to be modest I will classify myself as "intermediate." I quite love Tagalog and wish I was more fluent in the spoken language, but never lived there long enough to reach that level.