At first I thought it was Tagalog but the nga was off. I think it’s Cebuano or Visayas, which are major dialects of Tagalog that pretty much qualify as their own official languages given how many speak them, though the dialects have many dialects as well.
As a native Cebuano speaker I would have said it’s Tagalog. The word choice is a bit odd for Cebuano as the common way to say it would be “Ingon sila”, at least in the metro Cebu dialect of Cebuano. I could be wrong though, as you mentioned there’s many dialects of it.
Linguistically Cebuano is a distinct language from Tagalog, though they’re closely related as they descend from the same proto-language.
Admittedly it’s been over a decade since I was fluent in Tagalog, and this could be a more formal (meaning biblical) grammar that isn’t used in daily conversations. Similar to old/formal English (“For whomsoever doth…”) versus modern English (“Anyone that…”).
My Tagalog was learned while amongst the Bikolanos. It probably wouldn’t have equated to much more than Grade 5 fluency. I’d trust a native Cebuano much more than some rusty Amerikano like myself 😄 especially since I only know maybe three words of Cebuano to begin with
Translation?
“Sabi nga nila” -> “They said”
At first I thought it was Tagalog but the
ngawas off. I think it’s Cebuano or Visayas, which are major dialects of Tagalog that pretty much qualify as their own official languages given how many speak them, though the dialects have many dialects as well.As a native Cebuano speaker I would have said it’s Tagalog. The word choice is a bit odd for Cebuano as the common way to say it would be “Ingon sila”, at least in the metro Cebu dialect of Cebuano. I could be wrong though, as you mentioned there’s many dialects of it.
Linguistically Cebuano is a distinct language from Tagalog, though they’re closely related as they descend from the same proto-language.
Admittedly it’s been over a decade since I was fluent in Tagalog, and this could be a more formal (meaning biblical) grammar that isn’t used in daily conversations. Similar to old/formal English (“For whomsoever doth…”) versus modern English (“Anyone that…”).
My Tagalog was learned while amongst the Bikolanos. It probably wouldn’t have equated to much more than Grade 5 fluency. I’d trust a native Cebuano much more than some rusty Amerikano like myself 😄 especially since I only know maybe three words of Cebuano to begin with
linguistics is just an infinite nesting of dialects anyway