Tagalog words for every day: days, months, numbers and greetings
Four sets of basic Tagalog words, each on a page of its own: the seven days, the twelve months, the numbers and the greetings. Every page gives the written form, the Spanish source where there is one, and the rules that trip learners up, such as the linker -ng after numbers or po in a polite sentence.
Tagalog words by topic
Each page opens with a table of the Tagalog words and then explains origin, spelling, grammar and usage, with example phrases from Wiktionary and Wikipedia.
- 01Days of the week in Tagalog: Lunes to Linggo, Spanish roots, spellingThe days of the week in Tagalog are Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwebes, Biyernes, Sabado and Linggo. Six of them are Spanish names respelt the Tagalog way, they are always written with a capital letter, and Linggo, Sunday, is also the word for week.
- 02Months in Tagalog: Enero to Disyembre, Spanish origins and datesThe months in Tagalog are Enero, Pebrero, Marso, Abril, Mayo, Hunyo, Hulyo, Agosto, Setyembre, Oktubre, Nobyembre and Disyembre. All twelve are Spanish month names in Tagalog spelling, and Tagalog writes them with a capital letter.
- 03Numbers in Tagalog: native isa to sampu, the Spanish set and ordinalsCounting to ten in Tagalog goes isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima, anim, pito, walo, siyam, sampu. Tagalog also uses a second set of numbers borrowed from Spanish, uno, dos, tres, and the two sets live side by side.
- 04Greetings in Tagalog: kumusta, magandang umaga, po and opo, salamatThe everyday greeting in Tagalog is kumusta, from Spanish cómo está, which works as hello and how are you. By the time of day Tagalog says magandang umaga, magandang tanghali, magandang hapon and magandang gabi, and adding po makes any of them respectful.
How Tagalog words are written
- TagalogTagalog Latin
- kumustahello; how are you Latin
- salamat pothank you (respectful) Latin
Tagalog is written in the Latin alphabet. Before the Spanish period it had its own script, Baybayin, an abugida with three vowels and 14 consonants. In 1940 the grammar of Lope K. Santos introduced the Abakada, an alphabet of 20 letters that counts ng as one; the Tagalog alphabet on the alphabets page sets it out letter by letter. In 1987 the Abakada was replaced by the 28-letter Filipino alphabet, which adds the letters needed for loanwords and names.
Spelling follows pronunciation, so Spanish loans look different in Tagalog: Huwebes for jueves, Pebrero for febrero. Dictionaries mark stress with accents, as in Wikipedia's isá and dalawá, but everyday writing leaves them out.
Most Tagalog words on these pages are Spanish loans or native words in a regular pattern, which makes them easier to learn than their number suggests.
Tagalog and Filipino
Tagalog was chosen in 1937 as the basis of the national language of the Philippines, which was called Pilipino from 1959. The 1987 Constitution named the national language Filipino and made it an official language together with English. The regulator is the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino.
Whether Filipino and Tagalog are one language or two is partly a matter of definition. Wikipedia's article on Filipino notes that the official view treats them as separate, while in practical terms Filipino may be considered the official name of Tagalog; a former chair of the commission called them mutually intelligible varieties of one language. The Tagalog words on these pages are the same in both.
Tagalog has about 33 million first-language speakers and 54 million second-language speakers, according to the figures in Wikipedia's Tagalog article. It is spoken across the Philippines, above all in Manila and the surrounding regions, and in Filipino communities abroad.
Days, months, numbers and greetings: what to expect
The days of the week in Tagalog and the months in Tagalog are Spanish names in Tagalog spelling, always capitalised. The numbers in Tagalog come in a native set and a Spanish set, and the greetings in Tagalog change with the time of day and with po for respect. The East Asian word list compares Tagalog words with those of its neighbours.
Questions about Tagalog words
Is Tagalog the same as Filipino?
Filipino is the national language and is based on Tagalog. The two are mutually intelligible, and everyday Tagalog words such as kumusta or Lunes are the same in both.
Why do so many Tagalog words come from Spanish?
The Philippines were under Spanish rule for more than three centuries. Days, months, a set of numbers and many everyday words were borrowed then and respelt in Tagalog.
What was Baybayin?
The script used for Tagalog before the Latin alphabet: an abugida with three vowels and 14 consonants. Everyday Tagalog is written in Latin letters.