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Bikol to Hiligaynon Translation

Translate Bikol to Hiligaynon instantly, then check the result against a 395-entry phrasebook compiled by hand rather than generated by the tool.

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Ctrl + Enter to translate · Ctrl + Shift + S to swap. Output is machine-generated — check anything that matters.

Bikol phrases with Hiligaynon translations

395 entries across 24 categories, compiled from published references rather than generated by the tool above. This set is compiled from general reference and is awaiting confirmation from native speakers, which is why each entry carries a pending-review marker.

BikolHiligaynonEnglish
Marhay na agaMaayong agaGood morning
Marhay na haponMaayong haponGood afternoon
Marhay na banggiMaayong gab-iGood evening
Marhay na aldawMaayong adlawGood day
Kumusta ka?Kamusta ka?How are you?
Marhay manMaayo manI'm fine
PaaramHalongGoodbye
SalamatSalamatThank you
Dakulang salamatMadamo gid nga salamatThank you very much
Daing ano manWala sang anumanYou're welcome
All 395 phrases

How Bikol and Hiligaynon differ

Bikol and Hiligaynon both belong to the Central Philippine group of Austronesian, but to different subgroups within it — Bikol to Bikol, Hiligaynon to Bisayan. They share sentence structure and a layer of Spanish-era vocabulary; the everyday words are their own.

No. Speakers of Bikol and Hiligaynon cannot follow each other without having learned the other language. They share sentence structure and Spanish loanwords, which makes written text look more approachable than it is, and almost none of the high-frequency vocabulary.

Bikol is a dialect cluster rather than one uniform language. Standard Central Bikol (Naga) is what machine translation targets; Rinconada, Albay and Masbate forms are frequently passed through untouched. Hiligaynon — Ilonggo to its speakers — is the Western Bisayan language of Panay and Negros Occidental, and is close enough to Cebuano that the two are routinely mistaken for one language.

Words that exist in both languages and mean different things

These are where confident readers get caught, and where the translator above is least reliable — a word it does not recognise is passed through unchanged, which can land in the other language as a real word with an unrelated meaning.

  • tabang

    Bikol: Help.

    Hiligaynon: Bland, tasteless — written tab-ang. The word for help is bulig.

Machine translation across Philippine languages fails in patterns rather than at random. We wrote up what those patterns are and why they happen, measured against Ilocano.

How accurate is it?

Neither Bikol nor Hiligaynon is a well-resourced language, and there is very little direct training data between them. The engine translates through English internally, so every result here is two translations stacked on top of each other, and the errors of the first are carried into the second.

We ran all 280 translatable entries in this phrasebook through the translator above and compared each against the human-written Hiligaynon. It matched or came close 51.8% of the time.

The reverse direction is not equivalent. Bikol → Hiligaynon scored 51.8% and Hiligaynon → Bikol scored 58.9% — a gap of 7.1 points on the same phrase set, so the other direction is the one to trust more.

Full results, category by category

Common questions

Is Bikol the same as Hiligaynon?
Bikol and Hiligaynon both belong to the Central Philippine group of Austronesian, but to different subgroups within it — Bikol to Bikol, Hiligaynon to Bisayan. They share sentence structure and a layer of Spanish-era vocabulary; the everyday words are their own.
Can a Bikol speaker understand Hiligaynon?
No. Speakers of Bikol and Hiligaynon cannot follow each other without having learned the other language. They share sentence structure and Spanish loanwords, which makes written text look more approachable than it is, and almost none of the high-frequency vocabulary.
How accurate is Bikol to Hiligaynon translation?
We measured it rather than guessing. Running all 280 translatable entries in our Bikol–Hiligaynon phrasebook through this tool, the machine output matched or closely matched the human-written Hiligaynon 51.8% of the time. It is weakest on greetings (13%) and strongest on nature & weather (77%). The direction matters too: Hiligaynon → Bikol scored 58.9%, a gap of 7.1 points. Treat it as a helpful draft, not a finished translation.
Why did the translation come back exactly the same as what I typed?
Usually because the engine did not recognise the word and echoed your input rather than failing visibly. But check before assuming it is broken: 145 of the entries in our Bikol–Hiligaynon phrase data are genuinely spelled the same in both languages, including Salamat (thank you), Ano ini? (what is this?), Apat (four), Lima (five). Unchanged output is not automatically wrong for this pair.
How many people speak Bikol?
Bikol is spoken mainly in Camarines Sur, Albay, Sorsogon, Camarines Norte. The 2020 census reports ethnicity rather than a separate speaker count for it, so we do not publish a speaker figure we cannot source. Bikol is a dialect cluster. Machine translation targets Central Bikol (Naga) and handles Rinconada, Albay and Masbate varieties poorly. Figures elsewhere claiming far larger totals for these languages are generally not supported by census data.
Can I translate Hiligaynon to Bikol as well?
Yes — use the Hiligaynon to Bikol page, or press the swap button above the text box. We measured both: Bikol → Hiligaynon scored 51.8% and Hiligaynon → Bikol scored 58.9%. That is a real gap, so the reverse direction is actually the more reliable of the two.
Is it free, and are there limits?
It is free with no account required. A single translation is capped at 5,000 characters, and there is a rate limit to keep the service available for everyone. There is no limit on how many translations you can do overall.

Related translators

Who maintains this

Compiled and maintained by John Smith. Last checked .

I compile Philippine-language phrase data from published references, check it against multiple sources, and measure the machine translation on this site rather than making claims about it. I am not a linguist. Entries I have not been able to confirm are marked as pending review rather than presented as verified.

No native Bikol speaker has reviewed this data yet. 395 phrasebook entries are marked pending review. See the phrasebook and its sources.

Translations are produced by a general-purpose machine translation engine and are not a substitute for a professional translator.