I am aware that the aspects of Tagalog verbs are not really iden

@Silverfoxdr With respect, man....how many times can you criticize Filipinos and their ability to speak another language on here? Learning to speak another language fluently without error is REALLY difficult. I'm not even Filipino and I'm starting to get offended. ; )

@JohnD I AM WALKING TO the station tomorrow. = Bukas MAGLALAKAD ako PAPUNTA SA estasyon. - Walking as the method for going to the station.I WILL BE WALKING AT the station tomorrow = Bukas MAGLALAKAD ako SA estasyon. - Just taking a walk in and/or around the station, maybe for exercise.

@JohnD For the Present and Future, you are correct.WHEN/WHENEVER I am sick, I take medicine = KAPAG ako ay may sakit, umiinom ako ng gamot.WHEN you arrive at the airport tomorrow, show your passport. = KAPAG nasa airport ka na bukas, ipakita mo ang iyong passport. - I think it would be more natural to express it in Filipino as "kapag nasa airport ka na" (when you are already at the airport) than "kapag dumating ka na sa airport" (when you arrive ...). That's because if we are to use "dumating" (arrive), we would understand that more as the point of arrival or the moment you step on any part of the airport. For the Past, we would still use "kapag" if we mean each time we got sick in the past. Kapag ako ay NAGKAKASAKIT/Kapag ako ay may sakit, UMIINOM ako ng gamot. = When/Whenever I would GET SICK, I DRINK medicine. ("Kapag ako ay may sakit" literally means "When/Whenever I have an illness".) We would use "nang" if we are referring only to a single or specific instance of being sick. By default, it would be the last time we were sick. If you are in a conversation, it could be used to mean the time you had the same illness as what the other person has or had. It may also be used when talking about experiencing an illness that normally only happens once in a lifetime, e.g., measles, chicken pox. Otherwise, we would be using "kapag" because they normally recur.Nang ako ay NAGKASAKIT, UMINOM ako ng gamot. = When I GOT SICK (the last time), I DRANK medicine. Nang ako ay NAGKASAKIT ng pareho sa sakit mo, UMINOM ako ng gamot. = When I GOT SICK with the same one you have/had, I DRANK medicine.Nang ako ay NAGKASAKIT ng bulutong, UMINOM ako ng gamot. = When I GOT SICK with chicken pox, I DRANK medicine.

Here is another one to think about @silverfoxdr and rather different.
English. I am walking to the station tomorrow.
Tagalog. Bukas maglalakad ako sa estasyon. (Please feel free to correct my Tagalog if it is wrong)
The English verb is in the present tense (although it clearly represents a future action). The Tagalog verb is in the future 'tense' (contemplated). But in this case it is the English tense that is rather surprising.
I am now on rather weak ground as I try to explain why English sometimes uses the present tense to describe some thing that is clearly going to happen in the future. I think it is because from a strict linguistic point of view English only has two tenses; past and present. This is because there is no change to the verb when using the future - there is walk and walked but no future verb form. To compensate, we have several ways of forming the future:
1. Adding the verb 'to go' with the infinitive. I am going to walk to the station.
2. Adding the verb 'will' with the infinitive. I will walk to the station.
3. An indication of time (eg tomorrow) combined with the present tense. I am walking to the station tomorrow.
Linguists I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) therefore consider the future 'tense' in English to actually be an aspect of the present tense.
In any case, here we have an example of a difference between English and Tagalog 'tenses'. Although strictly speaking, I think, it may be a difference between English aspect and Tagalog aspect.

I was absolutely gobsmacked (I think that is the correct grammatical term!) by the distinction between nang and kapag. I think it means that the simple English word when has different translations for past and present in Tagalog. A concept I had never dreamed of. It also makes me realise that when we use the word when in the present tense in English, we actually mean whenever. So if I have it right:
Past. When I was sick, I took some medicine. Nang.
Present. When (whenever) I am sick, I take medicine. Kapag.
Future. When you arrive at the airport tomorrow, show your passport. Kapag.
Really interesting stuff.

@Tagamanila This discussion of "when" is very informative (I am trying to think how to put it into flashcards to memorize.) But it brings up something that happens frequently when communicating with Filipino friends that I do not know if is cultural, or semantic.If I ask the question "when", i expect a time, date etc. But what Filipinos answer is almost always a situation. Q: "when will you graduate?" A: "after my final exams." Q: "When did he die?" A: "After he got pneumonia." Are there different Tagalog word for "when?" that would distinguish the kind of response I am expecting?I try to remember to ask "what time?" or "What day/date?" instead of when.

@FilipinoChatAdmin I see a strong parallel between learning grammar and learning music theory. Musicians in certain genres are actively hostile to knowing music theory, exalting "playing by ear," while other genres emphasize theory far too much. But the reality is the best musicians integrate both forms of understanding music. One really cannot understand a theory concept without knowing what it sounds like, and music theory rules apply to what is played whether or not the performer knows the rules (you don't need to know Newtonian physics for gravity to work.)Grammar, like music theory, is fundamentally descriptive -- it puts a label on things that happen. You can use language correctly by memorizing or extrapolating from examples, or by applying grammar rules. But to really learn the language, you have to merge those approaches so that they complement each other.

@FilipinoChatAdmin I chat online with Filipino friends pretty much daily, and have been visiting the Philippines more than once a year since about 2011. My friends include a college graduate and a third year college student who wants to teach English in private school, a couple call center workers, and several who have at most graduated from public high schools. I suspect that my friends are on average from a lower socioeconomic and educational level than what most Foreigners are likely to encounter. Their English ranges from sometimes nearly unintelligible to occasionally a bit rough around the edges.Some kinds of errors occur pervasively all across that spectrum of English fluency well educated to uneducated make the same mistakes, Most students of Filipino languages are aware of such issues as saying "she" for "he" we understand why that happens and can make allowances for it. I have picked up on some other recurring errors such as using "a" before the direct object of a verb, even when the noun is plural, and realizing I can never rely on the choice of verb tense to know the time frame of a statement. This is not meant to denigrate them, merely to acknowledge and address the challenges we each face in mastering languages with very different structures. I am quite sure my Filipino friends would not be offended by anything ai have said in these forums. They tend to think their English is worse than I think it is. At least for me, understanding the reasons for these errors will help me to compensate when hearing those errors, allow me to constructively correct the errors of some of my friends, and hopefully keep me from making comparable errors when I learn Tagalog -- Learning to be correct from the beginning.Until I came across this site, I was very frustrated with available Tagalog instruction materials. I believe much of the problem came from a misguided attempt to mischaracterize much of Tagalog grammar as being the same as English, and simply ignoring or deferring really important features because they were "too complicated."

@Silverfoxdr
OK, I get you. But, as a third party neutral, I just have to say this focus on errors Filipinos make and uneducated Filipinos, just comes off as a little condescending -- and I don't think that's your intent, but maybe there's a way to make it less so? Interpretation of text on the internet is often vague and hard to interpret.@Silverfoxdr
I totally love to know the grammatical structures underlying the language, too. That's why I did not enjoy using Rosetta Stone. BUT...on the other hand, you can't learn how to swim by analyzing the butterfly stroke. You've just got to jump in the water! I think it would be easier to analyze why other people make mistakes after you have a fairly sizeable library of sentence structures/patterns in your head that you can refer to. You're maybe skipping a couple steps that shouldn't be skipped? For example, if you learn "When Filipinos try to say X, they usually say it THIS way" for a number of sentence patterns, it would probably help your fluency, as well as help you correct others, a lot faster. Oftentimes there is no "logic" to why something is said a certain way, or at least the logic has been obfuscated and evolved over time, and it just IS the way it is.
Ex:
Why is it:
"Mayroon siyang lapis."
...but...
"May lapis ako."
?
Mayroon has the pronoun first with a linker. May has the pronoun second with no linker. The "logic" of the grammar is not so clear. But if you just learn the patterns, and someone said "Has he pen," you might think "Aha! He's using the mayroon pattern..."

@Tagamanila Actually, i am trying to avoid mapping English constructs onto Tagalog, which I consider to be one of the worst flaws with a lot of beginning Tagalog instruction. For example, I do not want to think of Tagalog verb conjugations as tenses, as in English, but rather understand them as aspects as they really are. And by understanding the difference, I expect to resolve some of the confusing things in some instruction materials that result from misrepresenting Tagalog grammar as if it wereEnglish grammar. And I hope this will help me correct for the errors my Filipino friends make with English verb tenses and in the future (when I get that advanced in speaking Tagalog) avoid making comparable errors with Tagalog verb conjugations.I am one of those people who can readily learn something by understanding concepts, but not by rote learning. People have different learning styles and the fact that many people speak a language with no knowledge of grammar rules does not imply that everyone should just not concern themselves with those rules. @FilipinoChatAdmin @FilipinoChatAdmin

@FilipinoChatAdmin I am not criticizing Filipinos for not speaking English. I readily admit that most Filipinos speak English much better than I expect I will ever be able to speak Tagalog. But there are certain kinds of errors that (at least less educated) Filipinos make consistently (verb tense being one of the biggest problems.) I am trying to learn how to understand the reasons for those errors so I can compensate for them when I hear them, and to be able to help my friends learn how to correct them, and eventually avoid making comparable errors when I speak Tagalog.

@FilipinoChatAdmin I am not criticizing Filipinos for not speaking English. I readily admit that most Filipinos speak English much better than I expect I will ever be able to speak Tagalog. But there are certain kinds of errors that (at least less educated) Filipinos make consistently (verb tense being one of the biggest problems.) I am trying to learn how to understand the reasons for those errors so I can compensate for them when I hear them, and to be able to help my friends learn how to correct them, and eventually avoid making comparable errors when I speak Tagalog.

@Tagamanila I am one of those people who can readily learn something by understanding concepts, but not by rote learning. People have different learning styles and the fact that many people speak a language with no knowledge of grammar rules does not imply that everyone should just not concern themselves with those rules.

I have copied (and simplified) this from another site but it seems to make sense to me. "Tense is whether an action happened in the past, present or future. Aspect is whether the action is completed, in progress or planned."In English we might say, "When I was young I lived in England". Lived is in the past tense. In Tagalog, I think, lived would be in the 'in progress' aspect (which I think is tumitira) as it was ongoing.This might not be 100% right but I think it is on the right lines.

@FilipinoChatAdmin Yes. Where aspect and tense do not line up is exactly what I am trying to get a handle on.Sort of an aside, I am not sure if Filipinos that I know so chronically use the wrong tense in English because of the discrepancy between aspect and tense, or because the inflection systems are so different between the two languages that they can not get their heads around English tenses.