The root tawag spans voice calls, summoning someone, assigning a name, reporting something by telephone, and reciprocal contact. English uses “call” across the same territory, but Filipino distinguishes these meanings through affixes, voice, and markers—most importantly tumawag, tawagin, and tawagan.
The core family
All unmarked forms below are (neutral). The morphology is regular enough to recognize, but the meaning of each family must be learned as a complete pattern.
| Family and usual function | Basic | Completed | Incompleted | Contemplated | Typical frame |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actor voice: place a call | tumawag | tumawag | tumatawag | tatawag | ang caller + kay/sa contact |
| Patient voice: summon or name a selected person/thing | tawagin | tinawag | tinatawag | tatawagin | ng/ni caller + ang/si person or name-bearer |
| Contact/addressee voice: telephone a selected contact | tawagan | tinawagan | tinatawagan | tatawagan | ng/ni caller + ang/si contact |
| Conveyance voice: report a selected matter by phone | itawag | itinawag | itinatawag | itatawag | ng/ni caller + ang matter + sa recipient |
| Reciprocal contact | magtawagan | nagtawagan | nagtatawagan | magtatawagan | ang contacts + optional sa frequency/context |
The noun tawag means a call, a name, or a term. Ano ang tawag dito? therefore asks what something is called, not necessarily who is telephoning.
Tumawag: select the caller
Actor-voice tumawag selects the caller. The contacted person takes kay when expressed by a singular personal name; an office, hotline, institution, or common-noun contact normally takes sa.
Tumawag si Dina kay Marco bago siya sumakay ng eroplano.
Dina called Marco before she boarded the plane. (completed actor voice; neutral)
Tumatawag sa klinika ang mga pasyente tuwing umaga.
Patients call the clinic every morning. (habitual incompleted actor voice; neutral)
Tatawag ako sa bangko kapag nagbukas na ang kanilang tanggapan.
I will call the bank once its office has opened. (contemplated actor voice; neutral)
English can put the contacted person directly after “call.” Filipino actor voice cannot copy that object pattern as tumawag si Marco unless Marco is the caller. Use tumawag kay Marco, or change voice and make Marco the selected contact with tawagan.
Tawagin: summon or assign a name
Tawagin selects a person being summoned or a person/thing referred to by a name. Context distinguishes the two readings.
Tinawag ni Lani si Omar para pumasok sa silid.
Lani called Omar to come into the room. (completed patient voice; neutral)
Tatawagin din ba ninyong ‘Silid Sinag’ ang bagong aklatan?
Will you also call the new library 'Silid Sinag'? (contemplated naming use; neutral)
Tinatawag nilang Maya ang pusang kulay abo.
They call the gray cat Maya. (incompleted naming use; neutral)
In the last example, the linker in tinatawag nilang Maya connects the naming verb to the name assigned, while ang pusang kulay abo is the selected entity. Naming constructions vary with discourse order, but tawagin consistently belongs to the family that selects the summoned or named entity rather than the telephone contact as such.
Tawagan: select the telephone contact
Tawagan makes the person, office, or service contacted by telephone the pivot. Compare the same call in two voices:
Tumawag si Mila kay Rosa tungkol sa nawawalang payong.
Mila called Rosa about the missing umbrella. (caller selected; neutral)
Tinawagan ni Mila si Rosa tungkol sa nawawalang payong.
Mila called Rosa about the missing umbrella. (contact selected; neutral)
The English translations are identical, but Filipino markers reveal the viewpoint: si Mila ... kay Rosa versus ni Mila si Rosa. This is a voice contrast, not active versus passive in the simple English sense. It follows the larger actor-voice and patient/non-actor voice system.
Hindi pa tinatawagan ng kompanya ang mga aplikanteng pumasa.
The company is not calling the successful applicants yet. (negative incompleted contact voice; neutral)
Tatawagan mo ba ang tubero ngayong hapon?
Will you call the plumber this afternoon? (interrogative contemplated contact voice; neutral)
Itawag: select what is reported by phone
Itawag selects a message, incident, request, or other matter conveyed through a call. The recipient normally appears in a sa phrase.
Itinawag ni Ben sa barangay ang naputol na kable sa kalsada.
Ben reported the severed cable in the road to the barangay by phone. (completed conveyance voice; neutral)
Itawag mo agad sa hotline ang pagkawala ng iyong kard.
Report the loss of your card to the hotline immediately by phone. (conveyance-voice command; neutral)
This family does not merely mean “call it.” It profiles the reported matter as what is conveyed through telephoning. The semantic organization parallels other uses of i- conveyance voice.
Magtawagan: reciprocal or repeated contact
Magtawagan presents two or more participants as calling one another or maintaining telephone contact. A plural pivot can name the whole set; one participant may instead be linked through sa in context.
Nagtatawagan ang magkapatid tuwing Linggo kahit magkaiba ang oras sa mga lugar nila.
The siblings call each other every Sunday even though they are in different time zones. (habitual reciprocal action; neutral)
—Magtatawagan ba tayo bukas? —Oo, pagkatapos ng pulong.
—Shall we call each other tomorrow? —Yes, after the meeting. (neutral conversation)
Common Mistakes
Copying the English direct-object frame after tumawag
❌ Tumawag ako si Rina kaninang umaga.
Incorrect — actor-voice tumawag requires kay before a singular personal-name contact.
✅ Tumawag ako kay Rina kaninang umaga.
I called Rina this morning. (actor voice; neutral)
Mixing the tawagin and tawagan frames
❌ Tawagin mo kay Rina mamaya.
Incorrect — this mixes patient tawagin with the actor-voice kay contact frame.
✅ Tawagan mo si Rina mamaya.
Call Rina on the phone later. (contact-voice command; neutral)
Keeping the caller as a si phrase with tawagan
❌ Tinawagan si Pablo ang dentista.
Incorrect — tinawagan selects the dentist, so the personal-name caller requires ni.
✅ Tinawagan ni Pablo ang dentista.
Pablo called the dentist. (completed contact voice; neutral)
Using kay with an institution
❌ Tatawag kami kay ospital para magtanong tungkol sa iskedyul.
Incorrect — kay marks a singular personal name; a common-noun institution takes sa.
✅ Tatawag kami sa ospital para magtanong tungkol sa iskedyul.
We will call the hospital to ask about the schedule. (actor voice; neutral)
Key Takeaways
- Tumawag kay/sa selects the caller and marks the contact obliquely.
- Tawagin means summon or name; tawagan normally means telephone a selected contact.
- Itawag selects a matter conveyed by phone, while magtawagan expresses reciprocal contact.
- Do not treat these affixes as tense endings: each family has its own completed, incompleted, and contemplated forms.
Related Topics
- Actor VoiceB1 — Use actor voice to select an actor, experiencer, or moving participant as pivot while marking patients and obliques appropriately.
- Patient VoiceB1 — Use patient voice to select an affected or delimited participant as pivot while retaining the actor as a core ng-series phrase.
- The -an locative and patient voice: Function and DistributionB1 — Understand how -an/-han verb families select places, surfaces, goals, addressees, and lexical patient-like pivots.
- The i- conveyance voice: Function and DistributionB1 — Learn how i- benefactive/instrumental voice selects a conveyed, placed, applied, or lexically specified participant as the pivot.
- The mag-...-an reciprocal action: Function and DistributionB1 — Use mag-...-an to present a plural or coordinated actor group whose members act mutually, jointly, or competitively.
- kay for Singular Personal ObliquesA1 — Use kay before one personal name as a recipient, destination, source, relational complement, or ownership predicate.