Yep, Filipino is hard to analyze grammatically from a non-native speaker's perspective.

I actually have gone into that rabbit hole through an exchange student who who really wanted to learn our language. She asked a lot of questions about (basic) Filipino grammar, and we've probably spent more than an hour (in a 1.5 hour class "slot") arguing amongst ourselves about a fairly common grammatical construct. If I am recalling it correctly, it's something to do with what exactly the word ‘ay’ stands for, like in the sentence “Si nanay ay nagluluto” (which can be converted to “Nagluluto si nanay,” which started the entire argument).