Basic Tagalog phrases
The 15 you will hear on your first day, with audio, in the order you will hear them. Not a list of greetings, colours and fruit.
The ones you hear every hour
These are the 15 phrases in the first frequency band. If you learn nothing else before you land, learn these.
| Rank | Tagalog | What it does | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SigePlay | Okay / go ahead / sureDoes far more work than 'okay' does in English. It ends calls, agrees to plans, waves off an apology and closes a conversation. If you learn one word, learn this one. | neutral |
| 2 | SalamatPlay | Thank you | neutral |
| 3 | Salamat poPlay | Thank you (respectful)po is not a word with a meaning, it is a respect marker. It goes in almost anything said to someone older or senior, and leaving it out is the single most common way a learner sounds rude without knowing it. | polite |
| 4 | Walang anumanPlay | You're welcome | neutral |
| 5 | OoPlayKunokuno, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons | Yes | casual |
| 6 | OpoPlay | Yes (respectful)Not optional with elders. Oo to your grandmother is the kind of thing that gets remarked on. | polite |
| 7 | HindiPlay | No / not | neutral |
| 8 | Hindi poPlay | No (respectful) | polite |
| 9 | Kumusta?Play | How are you? / heyFrom the Spanish 'como esta'. Works as a greeting on its own, the way 'how's it going' does. | neutral |
| 10 | Kumusta po kayo?Play | How are you? (respectful)kayo is the plural 'you' used as a singular respectful one, exactly like French vous. | polite |
| 11 | Mabuti namanPlay | I'm fine | neutral |
| 12 | Ay naku!Play | Oh no / oh my goodnessAll-purpose exasperation, sympathy or dismay. Fits a stubbed toe, a traffic jam and a national scandal. | casual |
| 13 | Sandali langPlay | One moment | neutral |
| 14 | Kain tayo!Play | Let's eat!Offered to anyone in the room when you start eating, and it is a courtesy as much as an invitation. If you are not joining, the expected answer is a warm 'Sige, salamat'. | casual |
| 15 | Ingat!Play | Take careHow you end a goodbye. Literally 'be careful', used the way 'take care' is. | neutral |
There are recordings on this page. 14 of them are a synthetic fil-PH voice and 1 is a human recording, credited where it plays. A learner is owed the knowledge that the thing they are copying is not always a person; human recordings replace the synthetic ones from the top of the list down.
Why this order and not the usual one
Every other Tagalog course is ordered by topic: greetings, then family, then food, then colours. That ordering is inherited from print, where a chapter has to be about something. It is also why a learner can finish three units and still not follow a conversation. They have the names of eleven fruits and none of the words that hold a sentence together.
This list is ordered by how often you will hear the phrase. The first entry is not a greeting, it is the word that ends calls, agrees to plans and waves off an apology, because that is the word you will hear most.
What you say back
A phrasebook teaches you what to say. It rarely tells you what comes back at you, which is the half you will actually need to recognise.
| They say | You say |
|---|---|
| SalamatPlayThank you | Walang anumanPlayYou're welcome |
| Kumusta?PlayHow are you? / hey | Mabuti namanPlayI'm fine |
| Anong pangalan mo?PlayWhat's your name? | Ako si ___PlayI'm ___ |
Polite, neutral, casual
Register is not decoration in Tagalog. The same sentence with and without one small word is the difference between speaking to a friend and speaking to somebody's grandmother. Every phrase on this site carries its register, and the split across the full list is 28 neutral, 13 casual, 12 polite.
Start with the free sectionThe six words that run the language — Tagalog puts a little word in front of every noun to show what it is doing. There are only six of them. No account, nothing to install.The rest of the list
There are 38 more phrases past this first band, in 3 further bands. The whole list is on one page. The two grammar charts that decide the shape of every sentence are separate, because they are not phrases and they are learned differently: the markers and the pronouns.
The frequency ordering on this site is an informed estimate, not a corpus count. There is no published frequency count for conversational Tagalog, so it prints a rank and never a percentage. When a real count exists, the order changes and this line changes with it.
It teaches Tagalog as spoken around Manila, which is not the same thing as Filipino and is not the whole country. Cebuano and Ilocano are different languages, not accents.
Nothing is drilled until a native speaker has checked it. What has been checked, by whom, and what is still owed is written down on the sources page.
- Phrase lookupSearch a word, see what lives next to it.
- Why Duolingo has no TagalogThe real reason, and what to do instead.
- All the phrasesThe whole list this app drills, on one page.
- ang, ng, saNine cells that decide the shape of every Tagalog sentence.
- The pronoun gridTwenty-one cells, three cases, and the two words for we.
- Pronunciation and stressWhy buhay and buhay are different words, and how to hear it.
- Where this comes fromEvery source, every licence, and who checked the Tagalog.
- Tagalog vs FilipinoDifferent names, mostly the same language. What actually differs.
- Is Tagalog hard?Honest answer: the grammar is strange, the spelling is free.
- Tagalog greetingsHello, good morning, and what you say back.
- Hello in TagalogKumusta, and the formal version, with audio.
- Thank you in TagalogSalamat, salamat po, and the reply.
- Po and opoThe respect particle, and the mistake foreigners make with it.
- Mahal kitaI love you, and the word that also means expensive.
- Tagalog and SpanishThousands of shared words, and not one shared grammar rule.
- Is Tagalog tonal?No. But stress changes meaning, which trips people the same way.
- Tagalog for travelThe jeepney word, the haggling word, and where the bathroom is.
- Learn Tagalog freeWhat is actually free, what is a trial, and where to start.
- Tagalog numbersTwo whole systems, and when each one is used.