Question: sentence structure rules?

The word order you have learnt is correct for casual speach. The VERB is placed in front of the sentence.For formal speach the word order of a phrase can be inverted ... but this has to be indicated by an AY ... this is callled AY-inversion. Usuallly this is only applicable for writtten or formal language. In spoken language the casual form is preferred.

@Niemil
Tagalog sentences can become quite complex, beautiful, intricate, etc., just like English sentences. This sentence structure you mentioned above is a basic building block, a simple sentence structure - of course, as you learn more structures you can find out how this structure can be modified or embellished in order to make sentences more complex or interesting.Off the top of my head, sentence order will also switch around when you do things like negate a sentence. The structure can also move around for certain pronouns (in particular, mo, ko and ka) where the short pronoun will jump earlier in the sentence than your structure above (“Tatanggapin ka namin blah blah blah” = We will accept you blah blah blah). There are other cases, too…too many to list. The best tactic is to learn different structures one by one, and eventually you’ll get more and more comfortable with the expected word order and expressing more complex ideas.

That’s the general order but only grammarians care deeply about it. Filipinos use the “ay” format more than you’re taught (they just leave out the “ay”) and they just mix the order in general . I’d say V first is the safest to get started with.

Using the "ay" form would be the equivalent of something in English like"San Francisco is where I live" versus "I live in San Francisco".The "ay" form is best suited for Tagalog songs, not conversational Tagalog

@Bituingmaykinang
It is fairly common in casual speech, too. Beginners students should definitely know how it works and gain some basic familiarity with its use. I don’t have the info on hand, but a while back I looked at how common “ay” was from our 300 hours of Youtube transcripts, and it was just as common as a number of other words that we would consider common.

@jkos Agreed I was taught that it was only used in songs and poetry but after speaking to Filipinos a lot and listening to 1000s (literally) of hours of content it’s a lot more common than I thought.

I still think it's not that common on casual speech, especially not as much as how learners want to to be more common. Formal speech, yes. Less people will prefer "Ako ay pupunta doon" versus "Pupunta ako doon" (even shortened to Punta ako doon) just as much as "San Francisco is where I live" is less preferred than "I live in San Francisco"

@Bituingmaykinang Well, I think, word order is much more important in English than it is in Tagalog. The sentence: "San Francisco is where I live" I would interpret ... I live in SAN FRANCISCO and not in any other town ! So a certain emphasis is put on the town, when it comes first in the sentence. I am not sure .... but I dont think this is the same in Tagalog. I think they use FOCUS much more than WORD ORDER to emphasize things ... but correct me, if I should be wrong.Otherwise I would say, as a foreigner we should learn the language and its rules from square one ! Once we master the rules, we can then use "dirty" constructs that locals are preferring ... but we always should know about the proper grammar in the first place.