Pig Latin translator
Pig Latin is a playful word game. Type a sentence and each word is rewritten by the rules below, with capitals and punctuation kept in place. A reverse mode makes an honest attempt to undo it.
Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Choose the direction and paste your text.
- The translation appears as you type. Copy it with the button.
The rules
- Vowel at the start: add “way”. “apple” becomes “appleway”.
- Consonants at the start: move everything before the first vowel to the end, then add “ay”. “string” becomes “ingstray”, “quick” becomes “ickquay”.
- No vowel at all: add “ay”. “hmm” becomes “hmmay”.
- Capitals and punctuation stay: “Hello, world!” becomes “Ellohay, orldway!”
Worked example
“Smile, quick apple!” becomes “Ilesmay, ickquay appleway!” “Sm” moves behind “ile” and “ay” is added, “qu” travels as one group, and “apple” gets “way”. In the other direction, “Ellohay igpay atinlay” becomes “Hello pig latin”.
Tips
Reverse mode works best on text made by this tool and fails on made-up Pig Latin with other endings. Names and slang that do not follow English spelling may come out odd in both directions.
Frequently asked questions
Which Pig Latin rules does this use?
Words that start with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) get "way" added at the end. Words that start with consonants move those letters, up to the first vowel, to the end and add "ay". "Qu" moves together, and a "y" at the start counts as a consonant while a "y" later in the word counts as a vowel. A word without vowels just gets "ay". Other schools of Pig Latin add "yay" or "hay" to vowel words; this tool uses "way".
Are capital letters and punctuation kept?
Yes. A capitalised word stays capitalised on its new first letter, a word in all capitals stays in capitals, and punctuation, numbers and spaces are left exactly where they were. Hyphenated words and contractions are handled part by part.
Which words are not translated?
Words with letters outside plain A to Z, for example accented or non-Latin words, are copied unchanged, since the rules are English ones.
Why is the translation back to English only approximate?
Pig Latin loses information. "orldway" could be "world" or a vowel word "orld"; "etway" could be "wet" or "et". The reverse mode treats "way" after a vowel start as the vowel rule, otherwise it moves the last consonant group, matched against common English word starts like "str" and "sh", back to the front. Check the result by eye, and expect mistakes with words starting with "w".