SO YOUR PARTNER IS FILIPINO

Nobody warns you about the second helping.

You have met someone. You are serious about each other. And in three weeks you are going to walk into a room full of their family, in a language you do not speak, and try very hard not to get it wrong.

Most Tagalog phrasebooks are written for tourists. They will teach you to ask for directions and order in a restaurant. None of them will tell you what to say when someone hands you a plate of food you have already politely declined twice, or how to address an aunt who is not actually your aunt, or why everyone in the room appears to be waiting for you to sing.

This book is for the other situation. The one where the stakes are personal.

Inside:

• Po and opo, the respect words that matter more than any vocabulary you memorise


• Who to call Tito, Tita, Ate and Kuya, and how to work it out on the spot


• What to bring, what to say at the door, and what to do instead of a handshake


• How to survive the food, the fiesta and the karaoke


• The questions you will be asked forty times, with answers ready to go


• What to do when something serious happens, including hospital visits and wakes


• Money, gifts and balikbayan boxes, the chapter nobody else writes


• A cheat sheet of 100 phrases with pronunciation, for the flight over

It will not make you fluent. It will get you through Sunday lunch.

Written by an outsider, for outsiders.