Structure question...

@FilipinoChatAdmin @calinga "Bang" is "ba na". "Naniniwala ka ba na binata si George?" is exactly how that sentence would be if we'd unlink "na" from "ba". Nothing is wrong with separating them. We just might tend to use "bang" more often than "ba na".The "na" is the "that" in the English translation. It links the transitive verb to its object.naniniwala NA binata si George = believing THAT George is a bachelor
Naniniwala ka NA/kaNG binata si George? = Do you believe THAT George is a bachelor?
Naniniwala ka ba NA/baNG binata si George? = Do you believe THAT George is a bachelor?

@calinga I think authors of instruction materials think they are making the student more comfortable by drawing parallels even when they don't exist and focusing on what is similar -- even if atypical.Most early students of languages (and nearly all who have never studied a foreign language) start out thinking that learning a language just means "translating" words into the "equivalent" in the foreign language. I think it would be better to disabuse students of that notion from the very start rather than twist the instruction to fit that model for as long as possible.Off topic maybe, but it reminds me of being interviewed about the mountain dulcimer (American string instrument.) Although I told the interviewer that there is very little similarity to the guitar, when the article came out it had one of those paragraph headings saying "Like a guitar" followed by "it has strings tuned to a specific pitch." That is like saying that a kangaroo and a shark are alike in having two eyes and a tail. Unfortunately some language instructors may be doing the same thing.

@Silverfoxdr That makes total sense! I'll just keep plugging away and stop trying to put things in boxes where they don't fit.I appreciate everyone's comments and answers!

@calinga I strongly try to discourage calling "ng" (and and also "si", "ang" "ni") "articles." This misrepresentation is one of the things that most sidetracked me in my learning Tagalog and causes many Tagalog speakers to consistently make errors.They are case markers with no equivalent in English. They have a fair equivalency to the declensional endings of inflected Indo-European languages, but absolutely no correlation to the articles "the" and "a/an" used in some Indo-European languages. Articles are tricky and idiosyncratic but relate in general to specificity of nouns and number ("a" means "one.") English articles absolutely do not have a role in indicating actor or object of a verb (that is marked in English by word order alone.) The worst case I have seen of a Filipino believing that "the" means "si" or "ang" and that "a" means "ng" or "ni" is the following sentence: "A house hit the boy with rock." But I constantly have to correct my Filipino friends to stop saying things like "I have a dogs." where "a" is not needed to mark the direct object and here is inconsistent with a pleural noun.

@Tagamanila
I don't there there is a good example after your explanation! Just me incorrectly assuming Tagalog needed an "a" in sentences like English does. As you showed it just serves to identify the object in a sentence when it's not being used to show possession. I will keep pushing through haha and hopefully keep getting a better feel for these

@Tagamanila This helps me a lot because I always thought of 'na' just as a linker after a consonant or as a abbreviated way of saying 'now' and often times when I would see it I couldn't make any sense of it. I have a long way to go with linkers but this brings me one step closer.

@Tagamanila Idiosyncrasies of preposition (and articles were they exist in the language - which they do not in Tagalog) are always problematic. They are one of the ways I can spot a scammer who pretends to be American but makes mistakes even an uneducated native English speaker would never make. Tagalog "sa" is particularly difficult. It is similar to the locative and instrumental cases of Lithuanian combined, but covers even more semantic range. I have mainly learned to mentally correct for wrong use by Filipinos, though sometimes the result is humorous. "I am standing in my sister." "My brother is in the hospital." could mean admitted, or just visiting, or nearby waiting for a taxi - clarification needed. But we English speakers have it easy in Tagalog.

@Tagamanila Thank you. All previous instruction made it seem like "na" only stood alone if the preceding word ended in a consonant.

@calinga > "Pinuntahan ng kaingan ng bata sa tindahan" - I see it broken down as
> went a friend of the child to the store -> A friend of the child went to the store. With the ng
> here allowing the store to be the subject thus translating it to English as "a (arbitrary) friend
> of the child" instead of "the (one we talked about earlier) friend of the child""Pinuntahan ng kaibigan ng bata sa tindahan"
Pinuntahan (O-F verb) = went somewhere for something/someone
ng kaibigan ng bata = by the friend of the child - the actor of the verb "went"
sa tindahan = at the store - the "somewhere" of "pinuntahan".The meaning of "pinuntahan", however, is not completely accounted for. We only have the actor (kaibigan ng bata) who went and the "somewhere" (sa tindahan). We don't have the "for something/someone", which is the object and what the O-F verb has to have for its subject. What we have, therefore, is an incomplete sentence: The friend of the child went to the store for/to ?? PUMUNTA ang kaibigan ng bata sa tindahan = The friend of the child went to the store. - We need a S-F verb (pumunta) to make the actor the subject of the sentence and make the sentence complete. (Note: If we want to make the translation come out exactly as "A friend of the child...", we have to add "isang" to that phrase - Ang isang kaibigan ng bata...).The "ng" is not the "a". It serves to identify the actor of "pinuntahan" in this case. That's why I gave it the "by" meaning when I translated the phrase, but this "by" is no longer needed in the full translation of the longer phrase. Here's one way your phrase can become a complete sentence:Pinuntahan ng kaibigan ng bata sa tindahan ang nanay ni John. = The friend of the child went to John's mother at the store.Active-voice form: Ang nanay ni John ay pinuntahan ng kaibigan ng bata sa tindahan. Literal translation: Ang nanay (the mother) ni John (of John) ay pinuntahan (went somewhere for) ng kaibigan ng bata (by the friend of the child) sa tindahan (at the store). With regard to "Pumunta ako sa Pilipinas nung Enero ng tatlong linggo", "ng" there is "for". But if it's, "Pumunta ako sa Pilipinas PARA magbakasyon NG tatlong linggo" = I went to the Philippines for a 3-week vacation (FOR a vacation OF three weeks), then it becomes "of". Yes, the translation into another language can be confusing both ways. For us Filipinos, although the meaning of "ng" is usually to indicate ownership (hence "of"), it can be quite flexible just the same. We don't even think of what it really means. We only know what words it goes with or how to use it in a sentence. It is when we have to translate Filipino into English that we also have trouble about what "ng" should mean in an English sentence. We are forced to give it a few possible meanings just to accommodate the translation. I think the English prepositions are generally problematic for Filipinos too. For example, "Isusumbong kita kay nanay" is "I'll tell mom on you" in English. However, a Filipino who is not familiar with the English expression would most likely translate that to "I'll tell you to mom".So, I guess you will just have to struggle to learn how to express things in Filipino in the same way that we have been struggling for decades to learn how to express things in English. 😁 Esperanto is a brilliant idea, right? 🙄> "a" (noun marker where the noun isn't the subject.) - I am not sure about this. Can you give me an example?

@Silverfoxdr > So the linkers -g, -ng always represent assimilation of "na" to the preceding word?
Yes, provided you know when a word already ends with "ng" by itself.> But it is not permissible to separate the "na" when linking a noun and adjective?
It is always permissible. It's just not customarily done. However, when the first word ends in a consonant, except "N", "na" has to be a separate word.

@FilipinoChatAdmin "Na" is used more often than it seems. In a lot of cases, it's just not obvious.For example:
Ang aking libro. = My book.
Itong pagkain. = This food.
Kaninong bahay? = Whose house.If we are to reverse these statements, the na would appear.
Ang libro na akin. = Ang librong akin. = The book that is mine.
Ang pagkain na ito. = Ang pagkaing ito. = The food that is this.
Ang bahay na kanino? = The house that is whose?We just happen to use the "-ng" form of these sentences a lot more often than the ones where we'd use the "na" as a separate word.

@Tagamanila So the linkers -g, -ng always represent assimilation of "na" to the preceding word? But it is not permissible to separate the "na" when linking a noun and adjective?

Dang...now I am even less confident in understanding linkers!!But I appreciate the explanation!I feel like I mainly look at ng meaning either "of" (showing possession) or "a" (noun marker where the noun isn't the subject.) Extrapolating off of one of your examples @Tagamanila - "kaibigan ng bata"...
"Pinuntahan ng kaingan ng bata sa tindahan" - I see it broken down as
went a friend of the child to the store -> A friend of the child went to the store. With the ng here allowing the store to be the subject thus translating it to English as "a (arbitrary) friend of the child" instead of "the (one we talked about earlier) friend of the child"So then I want to assign a ng in @FilipinoChatAdmin 's original message to the "a" in the English translation. Am I just thinking of this incorrectly and relating it too much to English and the necessity to have a word somewhere in the sentence to represent "a"? Mentally I don't need a ng in the sentence "Binata si George" for it to make sense in my head as "George is a bachelor" so maybe I have just found my problem while trying to figure out how to ask my question...Edit: I remember @Tagamanila correcting my sentence on a previous post from "pumunta ako sa Pilipinas sa enero para tatlong lingo..." to "Pumunta ako sa Pilipinas NOONG/NUNG ENERO NG tatlong LINGGO..." Now ng is basically translating to "for" in the English equivalent. The more I think about this now the more questions I have!

@Tagamanila Ah, thank you! I did not realize "ba" + "na" can still be joined to "bang" if the "na" means "that".

@rambo2fit The "ng" (of) is always used as a separate word. It is only the "na" that may be attached to the preceding word to give that word that "-ng" ending.NG:
kaibigan NG bata = friend of the child
bata NG kaibigan ko = girlfriend of my friend ("bata" as "girlfriend" is slang; not so commonly used anymore though)Kaibigan NG bata si Luke. = Luke is the child's friend.
Bata NG kaibigan ko si Mary. = Mary is my friend's babe.NA:
kaibigan NA bata = kaibiganG bata = young friend
bata NA kaibigan = bataNG kaibigan = young friend Si Luke ay ang kaibigan koNG bata. = Luke is my young friend.
Si Luke ay ang bata koNG kaibigan. = Luke is my young friend.