Ilocano→Tagalog
Free Ilocano and Tagalog translation

Ilocano to English Translation

Translate Ilocano to English instantly, then check the result against a 428-entry phrasebook compiled by hand rather than generated by the tool.

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Ilocano phrases with English translations

428 entries across 25 categories, compiled from published references rather than generated by the tool above. Every entry was checked against more than one source.

IlocanoEnglish
Naimbag a bigatGood morning
Naimbag a malemGood afternoon
Naimbag a rabiiGood evening
Naimbag nga aldawGood day
KablaawGreeting / hello
Kumusta ka?How are you?
Mayat metI'm fine
Naragsak nga isasangbayWelcome
AgpakadaakonGoodbye
Kasta paySee you / bye for now
All 428 phrases

How Ilocano and English differ

Ilocano is an Austronesian language of the Northern Luzon group, spoken mainly in Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union. English is Indo-European. The two share no ancestry at all, and what they do share is three centuries of contact: English is co-official in the Philippines, so Ilocano carries a thick layer of English borrowings on top of an older Spanish one.

There is no question of mutual intelligibility here — the languages are unrelated. What matters instead is that English is the pivot: this translator, like most, routes Ilocano through English internally. That makes Ilocano↔English the strongest direction available for this language, and it is why translating Ilocano into another Philippine language is measurably worse than translating it into English.

Ilocano marks its nouns with ti and ti, uses the linkers a and nga, and has a dual pronoun meaning 'you and I' that Tagalog lacks entirely.

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?

We ran all 411 translatable entries in our Ilocano↔Tagalog phrasebook through the same engine this site uses, and compared each result against the human-checked Tagalog. Categories are our own; the comparison ignores punctuation and casing.

We ran all 411 translatable entries in this phrasebook through the translator above and compared each against the human-written English. It matched or came close 56.0% of the time.

Translating out of Ilocano works better than translating into it. Across 411 phrases, Ilocano as the source scored 58.9% and 56.0%; Ilocano as the target scored 50.1% and 47.2% — a gap of 8.8 points. We have now measured this at three sample sizes and the direction of the effect held every time, though its size moved between roughly nine and fourteen points, so treat the exact number as approximate.

Full results, category by category

Common questions

Is Ilocano the same as English?
Ilocano is an Austronesian language of the Northern Luzon group, spoken mainly in Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union. English is Indo-European. The two share no ancestry at all, and what they do share is three centuries of contact: English is co-official in the Philippines, so Ilocano carries a thick layer of English borrowings on top of an older Spanish one.
Can a Ilocano speaker understand English?
There is no question of mutual intelligibility here — the languages are unrelated. What matters instead is that English is the pivot: this translator, like most, routes Ilocano through English internally. That makes Ilocano↔English the strongest direction available for this language, and it is why translating Ilocano into another Philippine language is measurably worse than translating it into English.
How accurate is Ilocano to English translation?
We measured it rather than guessing. Running all 411 translatable entries in our Ilocano–English phrasebook through this tool, the machine output matched or closely matched the human-written English 56.0% of the time. The direction matters too: English → Ilocano scored 47.2%, a gap of 8.8 points. Treat it as a helpful draft, not a finished translation.
How many people speak Ilocano?
The 2020 Philippine census recorded Ilocano as the language generally spoken at home in about 1.86 million households, and 8.0% of the household population identified as ethnically Ilocano. Third-largest language in the Philippines by ethnic population, and the lingua franca of northern Luzon well beyond the Ilocos provinces themselves. Figures elsewhere claiming far larger totals for these languages are generally not supported by census data.
Can I translate English to Ilocano as well?
Yes — use the English to Ilocano page, or press the swap button above the text box. We measured both: Ilocano → English scored 56.0% and English → Ilocano scored 47.2%. That is a real gap, so this direction is 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 Ilocano speaker has reviewed this data yet. 12 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.