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Waray to Ilocano Translation

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

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Waray phrases with Ilocano 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.

WarayIlocanoEnglish
Maupay nga agaNaimbag a bigatGood morning
Maupay nga kulopNaimbag a malemGood afternoon
Maupay nga gab-iNaimbag a rabiiGood evening
Maupay nga adlawNaimbag nga aldawGood day
Kumusta ka?Kumustaka?How are you?
Maupay manNasayaat metI'm fine
Pag-ihaAgpakadaakonGoodbye
SalamatAgyamanakThank you
Damo nga salamatAgyamanak unayThank you very much
Waray sapayanAwan ania manYou're welcome
All 380 phrases

How Waray and Ilocano differ

Waray and Ilocano sit on separate branches of Austronesian: Waray in the Central Philippine group, Ilocano in the Northern Luzon 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 Waray and Ilocano 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.

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. 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.

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

    Waray: A grandchild.

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

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 Waray nor Ilocano 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 287 translatable entries in this phrasebook through the translator above and compared each against the human-written Ilocano. It matched or came close 51.6% of the time.

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

Full results, category by category

Common questions

Is Waray the same as Ilocano?
Waray and Ilocano sit on separate branches of Austronesian: Waray in the Central Philippine group, Ilocano in the Northern Luzon 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 Waray speaker understand Ilocano?
No. Speakers of Waray and Ilocano 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 Waray to Ilocano translation?
We measured it rather than guessing. Running all 287 translatable entries in our Waray–Ilocano phrasebook through this tool, the machine output matched or closely matched the human-written Ilocano 51.6% of the time. It is weakest on getting around (0%) and strongest on months (92%). The direction matters too: Ilocano → Waray scored 47.4%, 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 Waray–Ilocano 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 Waray?
Waray is spoken mainly in Samar, Eastern Samar, Northern Samar, Leyte (east). The 2020 census reports ethnicity rather than a separate speaker count for it, so we do not publish a speaker figure we cannot source. Figures elsewhere claiming far larger totals for these languages are generally not supported by census data.
Can I translate Ilocano to Waray as well?
Yes — use the Ilocano to Waray page, or press the swap button above the text box. We measured both: Waray → Ilocano scored 51.6% and Ilocano → Waray scored 47.4%. 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 Waray 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.