Amanung Sisuan — the language suckled from birth
A complete A1–A2 course in the language of Pampanga and Central Luzon
Kapampangan is spoken by around two million people in Pampanga, Tarlac, Bataan and parts of Nueva Ecija and Bulacan. It is not a dialect of Tagalog — it belongs to the Central Luzon branch, and its closest relative is Sambal.
This course takes you from your first greeting to the point where you can hold a market transaction, describe your family, negate, question, and read an object-focus sentence without flinching. It covers the CEFR A1 and A2 levels in full.
Sounds, greetings, the grammatical machinery, and the topics you will use first.
Five vowels, phonemic stress, and why this language has no tones
Greetings for every hour, and the particle that makes anything polite
ing, ning, king — the words that assign every noun its job
Three pronoun sets, three ways to say “we”, one unskippable rule
ke, me, ne, da ka — the most Kapampangan thing in the language
A four-way pointing system, with plurals Tagalog doesn't have
Family, birth order, and showing whose
Counting, prices, the parts of the day, and asking someone's age
Sisig, bringhe, buru — the culinary capital in its own words
ati and ala: having, not having, and the house you keep it in
Verbs, focus, negation, questions, and handling real situations.
Three aspects, and the a→e signal that marks completion
Focus: the verb picks the subject, and the markers follow
ali, ala, e — three negators and one clear decision
Twelve question words, and the distinctions English throws away
ma- adjectives, colours, and the linker hiding since lesson 2
Liking, wanting, needing, being able, being allowed
Politeness as a dial, not a switch
A whole market transaction, using six earlier lessons at once
The vocabulary you need on a bad day
Ligligan Parul, kasebyan, and what Amanung Sisuan means
Reference and practice that works alongside the lessons.
Tick off the CEFR A1 and A2 descriptors as you meet them. Each statement links to the lesson that teaches it.
Every word in the course, searchable and sortable, with audio and one-click adding to your review deck.
Graded passages that recycle the grammar and vocabulary you have met, with comprehension questions.
The paradigm tables on one printable page — markers, pronouns, the fusion grid, aspects.
No — and the question is worth answering properly, because the word "dialect" has done real damage to Philippine regional languages.
Kapampangan is a separate language. In the Austronesian family it sits in the Central Luzon group, whose other members include Sambal and Bolinao. Tagalog is in a different branch entirely. The two are not parent and child, and they are not close cousins.
The clearest proof is in lesson 11. The written form susulat exists in both languages: in Kapampangan it means is writing, in Tagalog it means will write. Sumulat means will write in Kapampangan and wrote in Tagalog. Shared vocabulary with divergent grammar is what separate languages look like, not what dialects look like.
Calling it a dialect implies it is a regional flavour of the national language and that speaking it is a lesser form of speaking Filipino. It is neither. Kapampangans call it Amanung Sisuan — the language suckled from birth — and lesson 20 explains why that phrase carries the weight it does.