Two books i would recommend Nigel.
1 Basic Tagalog for Foreigners and Non-Tagalogs by Paraluman S. Aspillera.
2 Tagalog-English English Tagalog (Pilipino) Dictionary by Carl R. Galvez Rubino
The Basic tagalog is great and see if you can get it with the CD. I hear it has editions with the CD but i never got one!
Vowels are pronounced like:
a as in ask, grass, alms, far
e as in end, carpet
i as in eve, mete
o as in obey, tobacco
u as in food, moon
This is hard to master unless you practice with your mahal
Then Consonants Ba Ka Da Ga Ha La Ma Na NGa Pa Ra Sa Ta Wa Ya
Ng reminds me of monty python for some reason...the knights who ni. maybe thats just my strange sense of humour.
The Dictionary is big and fully comprehensive and uses more advanced things than the basics.
