Nakakaiyak ang simula at nakakagulat ang wakas.

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Breakdown of Nakakaiyak ang simula at nakakagulat ang wakas.

• ang: subject/topic marker
• simula: beginning; start
• wakas: ending; end

Questions & Answers about Nakakaiyak ang simula at nakakagulat ang wakas.

Why does the sentence start with nakakaiyak instead of simula?

Because Filipino very often uses a predicate-first word order.

So:

Nakakaiyak ang simula
literally looks like tearjerking the beginning

but it naturally means:

The beginning is tearjerking

The same thing happens in the second half:

nakakagulat ang wakas = the ending is surprising

So the sentence is built as:

predicate + ang-phrase

not usually subject + is + adjective, as in English.

What does ang mean here?

Ang marks the topic of the clause.

In this sentence:

• ang simula = the beginning / the opening
• ang wakas = the ending

A good beginner-friendly way to think about ang is that it often points to the noun phrase that English would treat as the subject. But it is not exactly the same as English the.

So in:

Nakakaiyak ang simula

ang simula is the thing being talked about: the beginning.

What does nakakaiyak mean, and how is it formed?

Nakakaiyak comes from the root iyak, which means .