Tagalog is a language spoken in the Philippines. It is the language of the people around Manila and the areas near it, and it is also the base of Filipino, the national language of the country. That last part is where people get confused, so let me say it slowly. Filipino is the official national language. Filipino is built mostly on Tagalog, with words taken in from Spanish, English, and other Philippine languages. So Tagalog and Filipino are very close, but they are not exactly the same name for the same thing: Tagalog is the older, regional language of one people, and Filipino is the newer, national one made from it. Many Filipinos say "Tagalog" in everyday talk when they mean either one, and nobody thinks that is wrong. But in school, or in government writing, the two names are kept apart. It also helps to know that the Philippines has more than a hundred languages. A person from Cebu may speak Cebuano at home, not Tagalog, and may not enjoy being told that Tagalog is "the" Filipino language. The word is also used for the people themselves — the Tagalog people — and as an adjective, as in Tagalog songs, Tagalog movies. It is always written with a capital T. Say it TA-ga-log, with the stress on the first part.