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Ilocano to Waray Translation

Translate Ilocano to Waray instantly, then check the result against a 380-entry phrasebook compiled by hand rather than generated by the tool.

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Ilocano phrases with Waray translations

380 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.

IlocanoWarayEnglish
Naimbag a bigatMaupay nga agaGood morning
Naimbag a malemMaupay nga kulopGood afternoon
Naimbag a rabiiMaupay nga gab-iGood evening
Naimbag nga aldawMaupay nga adlawGood day
Kumustaka?Kumusta ka?How are you?
Nasayaat metMaupay manI'm fine
AgpakadaakonPag-ihaGoodbye
AgyamanakSalamatThank you
Agyamanak unayDamo nga salamatThank you very much
Awan ania manWaray sapayanYou're welcome
All 380 phrases

How Ilocano and Waray differ

Ilocano and Waray sit on separate branches of Austronesian: Ilocano in the Northern Luzon group, Waray in the Central Philippine group. They are related in the way English and Russian are related — the same family, far enough apart that the relationship is a fact about history rather than something a speaker can use.

No. Speakers of Ilocano and Waray 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.

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. Waray runs a systematic s→h shift against its Bisayan neighbours — sin-o becomes hin-o, sarili becomes kalugaringon — which is the quickest way to tell written Waray from Hiligaynon.

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.

  • apo

    Ilocano: A respectful title for an elder or person of authority — roughly 'sir' or 'ma'am'.

    Waray: A grandchild.

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 Ilocano nor Waray 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 380 translatable entries in this phrasebook through the translator above and compared each against the human-written Waray. It matched or came close 47.4% of the time.

The reverse direction is not equivalent. Ilocano → Waray scored 47.4% and Waray → Ilocano scored 51.6% — a gap of 4.2 points on the same phrase set, so the other direction is the one to trust more.

Full results, category by category

Common questions

Is Ilocano the same as Waray?
Ilocano and Waray sit on separate branches of Austronesian: Ilocano in the Northern Luzon group, Waray in the Central Philippine group. They are related in the way English and Russian are related — the same family, far enough apart that the relationship is a fact about history rather than something a speaker can use.
Can a Ilocano speaker understand Waray?
No. Speakers of Ilocano and Waray 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 Ilocano to Waray translation?
We measured it rather than guessing. Running all 380 translatable entries in our Ilocano–Waray phrasebook through this tool, the machine output matched or closely matched the human-written Waray 47.4% of the time. It is weakest on everyday verbs (10%) and strongest on months (83%). The direction matters too: Waray → Ilocano scored 51.6%, a gap of 4.2 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: 69 of the entries in our Ilocano–Waray phrase data are genuinely spelled the same in both languages, including Lima (five), Pito (seven), Walo (eight), Lalaki (man). Unchanged output is not automatically wrong for this pair.
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 Waray to Ilocano as well?
Yes — use the Waray to Ilocano page, or press the swap button above the text box. We measured both: Ilocano → Waray scored 47.4% and Waray → Ilocano scored 51.6%. 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 Ilocano speaker has reviewed this data yet. 380 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.