One final difference worth mentioning among the four ways to pronounce Filipino (Tagalog) words is the accent marks (tuldik) used with them.
I would note, though, that these accent marks aren’t used very common anymore, at least not in ordinary conversations and writing. Unlike in Italian, for example, where they really put accent marks on the last syllable (ex. città, Gesù) and that’s how you know you’re supposed to put the stress on that last syllable, in Filipino, you could spell the word without the accent mark and the spelling would still be considered correct. Which is kind of a shame because it would have been a big help to us non-Tagalog Filipinos, who still get confused on whether certain words are pronounced with glottal stops. (Seriously, it’s a struggle! ^_^ ) But then I suppose it’s just as well, because having to write all those accent marks in every non-malumay word would have been an absolute chore.
Anyway.
These are the accent marks used in Filipino:
- Malumay – no accent mark
- Malumi – paiwa (`)
- Mabilis – pahilis (´)
- Maragsa – pakupya (^)
Note that the accent marks are placed above the last vowel of the word but it does not necessarily mean that that’s the vowel to stress.
- For example, lupà (land) has a malumi pronunciation, thus the use of the paiwa accent mark above the “a”, but being malumi, the stress is of course on the penultimate syllable, which is “lu”.
Of all these accent marks, the one I would sometimes use when writing Filipino words would be the pakupya, especially if two different words have the same spelling, and it makes it much easier to understand which one I mean by indicating the pronunciation of the word.
- For example, the Filipino words for “stand” and “we” are both spelled “tayo” but they are pronounced differently.
But, again, it’s not strictly necessary to do this, and you can usually guess which word is meant from context clues anyway.