How to say thank you in Tagalog
Salamat. Add po for anybody older than you and you have covered almost every situation you will be in.
| Rank | Tagalog | What it does | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
Which one to use
- Salamat to friends, to people your own age, in a casual shop.
- Salamat po to anybody older, anybody in uniform, anybody serving you, and anybody you have just met. This is the safe default.
- Maraming salamat po when somebody has actually gone out of their way. Maraming means many.
There is no way to be too polite by accident. Using po where it was not strictly needed reads as warm. Leaving it out where it was needed reads as abrupt, so the asymmetry is worth remembering: when in doubt, add it.
Saying it right
sa-LA-mat. Three even syllables with the stress in the middle, all vowels pure. Not SAL-a-mat.
What to say back
Walang anuman is the textbook reply and it is genuinely used. In fast conversation you will also hear sige, or nothing at all, or an English no problem.
| Rank | Tagalog | What it does | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Walang anumanPlay | You're welcome | neutral |
| 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 |
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.
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